Soils Lab

YaQi Xiong and Tchnavia D. Merrick

This week, we focused on testing capillarity in different types of soil, designing a structure that would model capillarity and designing a probe that would detect soil moisture. Once the probe detected water in soil due to capillary action, an LED would light up and music would play, which involved programming the Arduino. After two days of trial and error, the Arduino was able to play music and the LED lit simultaneously. We also designed a probe that was able to detect salt water conductivity. A highly saturated salt water solution was necessary to provide a good conductivity. We were also able to see capillarity in two of the four types of soils immediately and are awaiting the results of the fine grain soils to see if capillarity also occurs. Although we did observe capillary rise in the model constructed, the final design of the structure to be used has not been finalized.

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