It is their second to last day of Kent's Environmental class. Kent brought in two a samples of dirt from his house. He gave the bags to the students to allow them to identify what type of soil is contained in each bag. They began to discuss the different types of soil found all around us- sand, clay, etc. Sand, being most absorbent, is in class D, while clay, which creates a lot of run off, is in class A.
Kent then shows the students a picture taken of Wilson County from a plane. He then tells a story about a lady who inherited farmland from her aunt. She decides to sell the land to Wal-Mart. They then use a runoff calculator to decide how big of a rain garden we need. After break, they play around with the runoff calculator. They find out which area has the most and the least runoff. They find out that parking lots and a paved street with a curb had the most runoff. The least runoff occurs in meadows. But the class answers seem to conflict for answers for the least runoff. What is discovered is that soil types and hydrologic conditions matter when the answer is calculated.
Back to the Wal-Mart. The class has to decide how much runoff is there before any construction and after the Wal-Mart is made. To do this they use the spreadsheet, or better known as the runoff calculator. This concludes the second to last day of Environmental Science.