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.