Movement of water

Mr. Rushing’s 6th Grade

Navasota Junior High

October 5, 2005

How does water move…..

• Through materials such as – rocks – or sand– or clay?

• We can answer this question partly by a term called permeability.

Permeability

• Is the measure of how easily water can flow through a material (like rocks, soil or an aquifer.

• Permeability is a property of a material that we can measure.

What are some ways

that we could measure

how easily water

can flow

through something?

Permeability is GREATER (flow is faster) through the wider passage on the right.

Is something ever empty?

If you take a glass from a shelf,

is it empty?

or is it full of air?

If you fill the glass with sand,

is the glass now full

or can you still put material

(like water) into it?

Porosity

• refers to materials (like sand, rocks, marbles, or even molecules)

• that have enough open spaces

for water to move through.

• These spaces are called pores.

What pore space looks like

White areas are pore space,

Which box has the most pore space?

Which box has the least pore space?

1 2 3

Different grain sizes and packing arrangements = different porosity

Top: individual pore spaces decrease in size with decreasing grain size

Bottom: Porosity varies with the packing or arrangement of grains.

Permeability is GREATER (flow is faster) through the wider passage on the right.

Experiment Before

water was slowly poured into a beaker full of sand,

the water moved down through the sand,

what do we call this movement?

Experiment After

The water filled the original pore spaces.

Remember what the amount of pore space is called??

Lets do our own porosity experiments

Each group will have 3 cups

1.You will put gravel in one cup; sand in another and clay in the last cup.

2. Once the material is in the cups, compact or (gently smash) it down. We have a gray

cup for this.

3. Add the water to each material.

4. Record your observations on the worksheet.