Exploring Soil Moisture Sensors with Arduino

The K-12 STEM Education and Outreach Program is part of the Government and Community Relations Office at Berkeley Labs. The high school educational programs offered include the Berkeley Lab Director’s Apprenticeship Program (BLDAP), Experiences in Research (EinR), the Science Accelerating Girls’ Engagement (SAGE) program, and a week-long externship program for teachers. Each program has a different focus of activities for students. The overarching goal for each of these programs is to provide meaningful learning experiences to their participants to encourage pursuit of STEM majors and careers. I am taking my learnings from this summer and applying them to creating an activity that supports and encourages my biology classroom students’ curiosity around exploring STEM pathways. This lesson plan will focus on using Arduino and soil moisture sensors to collect data on water moisture for a plant. Students will be able to upload functional code onto the arduino and explain the code that makes the soil moisture sensor run. Students will be able to change the code to calibrate their sensor and work with their group to complete reflection questions about the code, the sensor, and further uses of the soil moisture sensor.