Percentage of water in a soil sample

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Question from avi:

what i need is the formula in getting the percentage from gram.
situation:
i need to know how many percent will i declare in getting the moisture of a soil sample
i weighed 2,000 grams of soil before i dried it out in the oven, after few hours the recovery
of the dried out soil is 1,700 grams. How many percent will be the water content?
kindly send me a formula in computing this.
thank u very much!

Hi Avi,

The soil initially weighed 2,000 grams and after drying weighed 1,700 grams. Thus the water content was 300 grams. Hence the fraction of the original 2,000 grams that is water is $\large \frac{300}{2000} = \frac{3}{20} = \normalsize 0.15 .$ As a percentage this is $0.15 \times 100 = 15 \mbox{ percent.}$

Penny

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