Title. I saw a video showing it happening, but I don’t understand why.
In: 51
You know when you have two big droplets of water on a flat surface, and you nudge one towards the other, when they make contact they appear to fuse together fast and aggressively? This is related to what’s known as “surface tension”.
A different phenomenon you may have noticed is when you take say, a dry paper towel, and make a corner touch some water, the paper towel kinda “sucks up” water into itself. This phenomenon is known as “wicking”.
I believe the reason water penetrates wet soil faster is related to a combination of these two. I believe the dry topsoil behaves like the flat surface and water kinda “beads up” on it, whereas on moist soil the rain water would “connect” to the water in the soil and then wicking would encourage it to enter the soil.
If a soil expert shows up they might be able to explain a bit better.
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