Loss on Ignition

Purpose

Loss on ignition is an experiment conducted in order to learn how much of a soil sample is composed of organic matter. Organic matter in this case can be water or carbonate minerals [1] pg. 1, among other things. After the ignition phase of the test, the measured mass should provide an accurate estimate of how much organic matter was lost during the ignition, leaving solely the compositional materials of the soil (i.e. sand, gravel). The data collected from these experiments can be used to develop soil profiles for the areas the samples are collected from. This can be useful for agriculture, development, or environmental protection and rehabilitation strategies.

Steps

1) Furnace safe containers are weighed for their starting weights and those numbers are recorded. 2) Samples are added to these containers and weighed with those weights being recorded. 3) Subtract the starting container weight from the weight of the container plus the sample number to get the weight of just the samples alone.