QUESTION:
I want to duplicate some of the tests you are going to run on the 
Mars soil using earth soil instead and analyse the results. Do you 
have any suggestions of experiments I can run preferably in the 
chemistry field?

ANSWER from Mike Mellon on November 19, 1999:
Past soil experiments conducted on Mars looked for evidence for life. One
of the findings was that there was very little organic matter in the soil.
We expect some organic molecules to accumulate non-biologically from natural
micrometeoric and cometary debris falling in from space. Their absence
suggest the martian environment is oxidizing (destroying) these molecules.
Future missions might test for more organic molecules and the oxidants that
are destroying them. Most Earth soils have lots of organic content.
In fact, it may be difficult to find a soils without organic matter to use
as a Mars-like soil. I suspect this line of experimentation might prove
too involved to be much fun.

Another finding was that soils on Mars can sometimes be cloddy as if
it were weakly cemented. These soils tend to have more sulfur and chlorine
than non-cloddy soils in the same area of Mars. These results suggest
that some soils contain salts (sulfates and chlorides perhaps). These
salts might be mobile due to water in the martian environment. The chemical
tests performed on Mars only measured elemental abundances. No tests have
been conducted on the surface of Mars to measure molecular species. You might
devise a test for specific salt species. Are the martian sulfur and chlorine
in the form of soluble salts (as apposed to trapped within insoluble rock
minerals)? What are the cations that combines with chlorine or sulfur to
form a salt? These questions are important to understanding the role of liquid
water on Mars. Actually, this one sounds like fun!

Other experiments I can think of would be more along the lines of
characterizing the soil's physical properties: particle size, surface
area, etc... also water content and freezing point with the salts. These are
things we would like to do on Mars but have not... yet.

Hope that helps to give you some ideas. Good luck.