Year 7 Science Experiment

Today, the Year 7 students were exploring the 'Water Holding Capacity of Soil'.

Students were presented with the following problem and had the task of designing and carrying out an experiment to test which of the soils retained water most efficiently.

Problem: Farmer Joe has three different paddocks and they all have a different kind of soil. He would like to work out which of his soils will hold the most amount of water and which soil will allow water to seep right through, not leaving much water for plants to use.

Students firstly measured the amount of soil that leaked out of each soil sample, then converted this value to a percentage of water retention efficiency. It was found that the clay soil had the highest water retention efficiency and the sandy soil had the lowest.