Elysian Fields ISD Excellence through Teamwork

On August 28th, 2017, we did an activity that taught us what soils hold water better, and what soil combinations would be best to grow plants in. The three soils were silt, sand, and clay. In this activity, we used objects that represented these soils. Sand was big rocks, silt was medium sized rocks, and clay was pebbles. We filtered water through each of these by cutting a two liter bottle of soda horizontally, putting a cup at the bottom of the lower part of the bottle, tying a coffee filter to the lip of the bottle, and turning the lid upside down so that the cup was under the hole and the hole looked like a funnel. In the first part of the project, we split into nine groups and each group was assigned one of the three "soils". We put our "soils" in the funnel, and poured water on them. The groups with "sand" (big rocks) filtered all of their water first. Then the groups with "silt" (medium rocks). Then the groups with "clay" (pebbles) finished. This showed us that the bigger the particles are, the less water it would hold. After that, we combined into three groups and had a competition. The competition was to see which group could put together a "soil" combination that would not filter the water too slow or too fast. The goal was to come in second place. This activity gave us an idea about the type of soil combination that our plants would most-benefit from.