🪣 Soil drainage: the whole packet

🪣 Soil drainage · 3rd–8th grade · 1 day of testing · about $1 · 45 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change the kind of soil in the cup, then how much water drips through in one minute will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🏖️ Sand (from a sandbox, or play sand)
• 🪴 Potting soil
• 🟫 Soil dug from the garden or yard
• 🥤 Paper cups with a hole poked in the bottom: 9, all the same
• 🧻 Paper towels: 9 small squares
• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 1, to catch the water
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer

Be safe: 🧼 Wash your hands after · 🧽 A bit messy

1. Put a small square of paper towel in the bottom of nine cups with holes, to keep the soil in.
2. Fill three cups with half a cup of sand each, three with potting soil and three with garden soil.
3. Pat each one down gently, the same way.
4. Hold a sand cup over a clear cup, pour in half a cup of water all at once, and start the timer.
5. After one minute, take the soil cup away and measure the water that came through.
6. Write it down, then test the other two sand cups the same way.
7. Test the three potting soil cups and the three garden soil cups.
8. Find the mean for each soil and draw a bar graph.
9. Wash your hands after touching the soil.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Soil   I measured: how much water drips through in one minute (mL)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: soil along the bottom, mL up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: mix sand into garden soil at a quarter, a half and three quarters, and draw a line of how much drains through.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which soil lets water through fastest: sand, potting soil or garden soil?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing the kind of soil in the cup would change how much water drips through in one minute, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed the kind of soil in the cup (Sand, Potting soil, Garden soil) and measured how much water drips through in one minute in mL.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same amount of soil, patted down the same way and half a cup of water poured in all at once the same, so only the kind of soil in the cup was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: Sand and Garden soil gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: mix sand into garden soil at a quarter, a half and three quarters, and draw a line of how much drains through.