Hydraulic Conductivity of Porous Media Exercise

Laura Ruhl, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Peer Reviewed Teaching Activities collection.

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are

Scientific Accuracy
Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
Pedagogic Effectiveness
Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page

For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.

This page first made public: Jun 6, 2013

Summary

This activity provides the hydrogeology students an exercise to understand specific discharge, hydraulic conductivity, and porous media. They will actually use a Darcy column to gather data on porous media, as well as calculate and understand the hydrologic properties of the materials.

Geology of groundwater occurrence, Aquifer properties, Groundwater ...(more) | College Upper (15-16)

Expand for more detail and links to related resources

Used this activity? Share your experiences and modifications

Context

Audience

This is an upper level course which is an elective course for our traditional geology majors and a required course for our environmental geology majors.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Students need to have an understanding of porosity, specific discharge, and hydraulic conductivity. This exercise is a great addition to lecture material.

How the activity is situated in the course

I use this in-class exercise as a supplement to my lecture material. It gives them hands-on experience in performing the darcy experiment.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

The student, in completing this exercise, should be able to calculate specific discharge, hydraulic conductivity, and have an understanding of how these can change with different porous media and space constraints.