Drying the Soil

As mentioned previously, the testing needs to be done while the soil is drier. It does not need to be entirely dried out, as in nature it is possible for a rainstorm to occur before the soil has dried from previous precipitation, but the soil should be around the natural state in which we obtained it. (The soil from southern New Jersey should be very dry, while the soil from Pennsylvania woods is naturally dense). Due to our time constraints we decided to speed the process by using a hair dryer to take moisture out of the soil. With this in mind our next rain simulation will only be done when absolutely necessary.

Blow Drying the Soil:
We took 2-3 "garden-shovel-fulls" at a time in a separate plastic container. We placed the lid over half of the box and used flexible cardboard to keep soil from escaping out the back and the remainder of the top of the box.

Here are some before and after pictures of the soil.