100 Days of Science #27-- Soil Samples
As part of my husband's job he often runs all sorts of tests on soil samples. One day a few weeks ago he knew we were home and he asked if the boys would like to learn a bit about what he does so we met up with him at the shop and he showed them one of the tests he does. We started with a large bucket of soil. We dumped the soil into a pan and weighed it. Then we heated the soil up on a hot plate to cook all the water out of the soil. We re-weighed the sample to see how much moisture had been trapped inside the sample. Once the soil was all dried we put the entire sample into the top tin of a series of stacking tin; each with a progressively smaller and smaller weave to catch the various sized particles of stone, sand, and clay. We put the lid on the stack and placed it into a machine that vibrates and shakes the stacks. We set the timer and settled back to wait. Once the timer went off we had to weigh each individu...