Soil Dry Percolation Rate

The purpose of this experiment was to measure how fast water flows through dry soil. A small piece of paper was placed on the neck of a 16oz water bottle that has been cut off to act as a funnel. The funnel section is filled with soil to 1 cm of the top. The funnel section was then on the remaining bottom part of the water bottle so it would collect the water as it drained through the soil sample. Then it was done the same way only, we replaced the soil and did clay and sand for the two other bottles, as seen here:

Water was collected at the base of the bottles and used to measure how much was able to collect after 3 minutes through each of the types of soil (from left to right: sand, our soil, clay):

The percolation rate was calculated by dividing the amount collected in each sample by the amount of time it was percolated for. With a diameter of 6.5 cm for each sample, this yeilded:

Sand:

(22.3 mL collected) / (3 minutes) = 7.4

Our soil sample:

(11.1 mL collected) / (3 minutes) = 3.7

Clay:

(8.2 mL collected) / (3 minutes) = 2.7

This data is consistent with the general accepted representations of soil percolation for each of these samples, with sand being the most permeable and clay being the least.

- Kasia