Conclusion: McKenzie Czabaj
Throughout this experiment I have learned a lot, especially that soil thieves do exist. The part that stood out to me the most was how important soil truly is. Soil isn't just "dirt" as the average person would say. Instead it's a living entity. Even though our microorganism experiment showed no microorganisms at the time, we found other organisms such as worms and insects while working with our soil. These creatures work very hard to help decompose and add nutrients to the soil. Without these creatures, our soil would be just dirt. Before I was oblivious to the fact that soil needs nutrients or else plants won't grow. I always just assumed soil was soil and plants could grow anywhere they wanted depending on their individual adaptations, but I was wrong. After testing our soil and finding trace elements of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium, I had little hope for our controlled experiment. When we remediated our soil, we had to add lots of elements in hopes of making our lettuce grow. Our controlled experiment did grow, but very very little. The remediated soil produced 5X or more sprouts. This proves that we need to take care of our soil as best as possible in order to continue providing for our population, because once its gone, its gone; well for our lifetime at least.

Martin Niemiec: Well, really, over the course of this experiment I learned a lot of common sense and specific things. Take care of the soil so you don't overuse it, sand drains better than clay, plants need nutrients like N, K, P to grow... Things that kinda make sense on their own. At my dad's house there is a garden, and I've been helping in that garden for years. Instead of being an enlightening experience for me (I've already seen all the worms, let the soil lie fallow, planted beans to get some nitrogen back...), this lab was mostly scientific practice, because I've already come into contact with the bigger concepts. What I learned was more like how to use a Bunsen burner and the crucible tongs, how to use a drying oven and test for nutrients in the soil. Of course, everyone should be aware that soil is a living, breathing, organic thing, and that taking care of it is in our (and the planet's) best interests, but I can't really claim these are things I learned from this lab. However, this lab was still a fun and rewarding experience, and I did acquire a lot of knowledge about our local soil, like how nutrient poor ours turned out to be. Illinois is a farmland state, too, so this showed me how much fertilizer farmers have to use in order to grow all the food we need, and put that in a bit of perspective. Despite already knowing about the importance of soil, when you see how excited all those people were about... dirt, you can't help but look at it with a little bit more reverence and appreciation. Thanks, dirt.

Salinization

Salinization:

In this experiment, there were seven bags; each was filled with a 120 mL salt solution, a paper towel, and five beans. The concentrations were as follows: 0, .5 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 grams salt per 100 mL water.
The only bags that showed signs of germination were the control (0 grams) and the smallest concentration (.5 grams). The one that grew the best was the .5 gram concentration of salt. Based on this data, we can conclude that large amounts of salt (1 g per 100 mL or more) are not good for growing. We can also conclude that no salt can still work for growing, but a little bit of salt is the best. The .5g salt/100mL water solution was the equivalent to the amount of salt found in natural water such as rain (not acid rain) and fresh water.

Too much salt can cause problems such as toxicity, inadequate amounts of moisture and oxygen, and a high pH that makes necessary nutrients unavailable to plants. To remediate the soil, one can use deep tilling, breaking up larger pieces of soil to improve downward flow of water, soil flushing, using low-salt water to flush the root zone, chemical remediation, adding lime, sulfur, or calcium to the soil to replace the salt, and a combination of these methods which is the most effective. 

.5 grams salt/100 mL water solution after approximately 5 days

Remediation and Controlled Experiment:


To test our knowledge of soil, we had to figure out what our soil sample needed and add whatever it was. After we did that, we compared the growth of lettuce seeds in the remediated soil to the growth of lettuce seeds in a control cup. To remediate the soil, I added to 53 grams of dirt: 20 ml of sand (in a beaker) to increase drainage and 75 ml of mushroom fertilizer (in a beaker) to increase nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus levels. Then we planted ten lettuce seeds in each, and watered them with 50 ml of water every few days until the end of the growing period. Here is the process and the results:

Original dirt

One control, one remediated

Seeds planted and beginning to grow. Remediated on top.

Growth near end. Remediated on left.

Remediated lettuce seedlings

Control seedlings

Berlese Funnel Test:

     The purpose of this multi-day test was to discover what kinds of organisms were inhabiting our soil. The end goal was to drive the little macroinvertebrates into a pool of ethanol over the course of several days using a heat lamp, where we could later inspect what has collected in the pool to learn about our soil's biodiversity. Dirt was placed in another bottle-funnel apparatus, 10 cm away from a heat lamp, and kept there for 5 days. When we went to analyze our results, it turned out that our filter had broken and some dirt had fallen in the ethanol pool. However, we proceeded regardless, but found nothing anyway. Apparently some dirt does not contain much life in the form for which we were searching, and ours did not come up with any.

Soil Porosity Test!

The purpose of this test was to find out how much water (or anything) our soil could hold at complete saturation, essentially finding the amount of our soil which is empty space. To find that , we put a certain amount of soil in a beaker, poured as much water as we could without oversaturating the soil, then compared the two volumes in percents to find the soil porosity. The beaker had 200 mL of soil and was able to hold 80 mL of water. Porosity= 80 mL H20 /200 mL of soil = .4 or 40% pore space.

Soil Dry Percolation Rate Test!

    The purpose of this test was to see how quickly water percolated (or drained) through our soil compared to some other substances. To do this, we created funnels from bottles and poured water through them, keeping track of the time it took for it to drain a measurable amount to the bottom. Illinois soil is known to be pretty full of clay,  but we only found a little bit in our composition test and the water drained through it quite quickly.
The soil drained 28 mL of water in 13.2 seconds. 28 mL/ 13.2 sec.= 2.12 mL/sec.
The sand drained 18 mL of water in 18.5 seconds. 18 mL/ 18.5 sec. = .97 mL/sec.
The clay drained 40 mL of water in 12.8 seconds.  40 mL/ 12.8 sec. = 3.13 mL/sec.

Soil Moisture Test!

     Fortunately, whichever rapscallions made off with our lovely dirt tray did not do so until later in this test, so some deliberation may occur. The purpose of this test was to find out how much water our soil sample held- similar to the porosity, but on a more intrinsic level. In order to do this, we would essentially blow dry the soil as one does wet hair after a shower, but there would be no hair (only dirt) and no hairdryer (only an oven in which it would be dried overnight). By looking at the difference in the masses of the soil before and afterwards, we could measure how much of the soil was originally water and evaporated off in the course of the heating. Fortunately, we were able to run another sample, and we found out that our dirt actually lost quite a bit of water. The original mass of the soil was 99.1 grams. After we placed it in the oven, we remeasured the mass of the soil and found it to be 60.9 grams. This means it lost an overall 38.2 grams or was 38.2 g/ 99.1 g = 38.5 % water.

The original dirt as it was last seen.