AVR-Chat

At 10:41 PM 10/18/2007 -0500, Zack Widup wrote:

>I haven't spoken out about this yet but I thought I'd throw in a few
>words.  I work for a geotechnical engineering firm that has a soils
>testing lab. I spend quite a bit of time doing all sorts of soil and rock
>tests, including moisture contents.
>
>I never saw it mentioned exactly why the electronic means of measuring
>soil moisture content was needed or what kind of accuracy was desired.
>But I can tell you this - there are so many different kinds of soils which
>all have different characteristics and read differently that you just
>can't do it with much accuracy.
>
>I've worked with silts, clays, silty clays, clayey silts, clays with
>little to some sand, etc. - I've seen everything you will find on the
>Burmister and Unified Soil Classification charts.  I once had the idea
>that we might be able to measure moisture content electronically.  After
>spending some time at it, I concluded it wouldn't work.  If it did, ASTM
>would have a techniquue outlined for it.  They don't.

Which raises a question, for me at least.  Could you usefully measure a 
different parameter.  Maybe how easily water can be extracted from the 
soil.  That might be more important for plants than the absolute moisture 
level in any case.  Hmm, some sort of highly concentrated solution inside a 
permeable membrane and measure the dilution?

Robert

http://www.aeolusdevelopment.com/

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