Baking a Soil Cake

You will remember we did a bit of treasure hunting with some of our friends. We found multi layers of soils and rock. With our mums help we found some different soil scientists who helped explain  what the different layers mean. We also found some websites that describe Waikato soil profiles. Some local scientists recommended sites to us too using Mum’s twitter and facebook. Sites we looked at were the New Zealand Soil Data Maps and Soil the world beneath our feet and this site about NZ soils and Waikato ones.  The profile of the soil we found looks a lot like the Te Rapa series but we are on the other side of the river.

The best site of all was one recommended by professor Louis schipper about using cakes to show your research

We thought as budding scientists we would build our own chocolate  research cake. In our cake you can see the top layer of peat, then clay, some iron oxide areas, a layer of stones, and a sandy and silt layer.

It was fun to research the soil and make the cake. It was even better eating it.

These are the awesome layers we found near our house.

These are the awesome layers we found near our house.

Adding the different layers/toppings to the cake.

Adding the different layers/toppings to the cake.

Adding the stone layer - maltesers

Adding the stone layer – maltesers

End result. We got the layers looking about right

End result. We got the layers looking about right

Soil cake tastes yummy

Soil cake tastes yummy

2 thoughts on “Baking a Soil Cake

  1. What a fantastic idea! Super combination of the text and photos, full of interest! Thank you for sharing these adventures.

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