Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

OMG!!! I cant find a picture or nething of how to make an artificial percolation test, and I NEED TO START BUILDING LK NOW, PLEASE CAN NEONE HELP ME OUT????

Hi Pete,

This is not my area, so please forgive me if I have the wrong end of the stick (so to speak), but based on your question, I performed a quick search on Google. It looks as though you're asking about how compact soil is and the resulting drainage of liquid from soils - is that right? If so, please check out:

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distributi ... D0583.html

http://www.biotank.co.uk/percolation_te ... akaway.htm

http://www.fieldmuseum.org/undergrounda ... test.shtml

These should get you started. Try searching for keywords, and I am sure you will find what you need. This only took me two minutes - though I may not have found exactly what you were looking for...

Good luck!
Geoff.

It might be fun to extract a column of soil into a clear plastic tube, then add water to the top of the tube, so that you can measure flow rates and observe the patterns of flow through pores. One popular area of research is whether most of the flow passes through isolated conduits like worm holes ("preferential flow") or whether the flow passes at the same rate through all the pores in the soil ("matrix flow). By varying the initial water content of the soil, the type of soil, or the flow rate, you may get different results.