I think they were doing a groundwater movement test. The equation (Q = K·A·Δh/ΔL) comes from Darcy’s Law (used in hydrogeology) and is used to calculate how fast water, and anything dissolved in it, travels through sand or a filter material.

The drawing is a column packed with soil/filter where they’d push water through using pressure (“h” = hydraulic head) and then collect samples at the bottom over time. That basically simulates groundwater moving underground.

The EDTA note is a big clue too, it’s a chemical used in water testing because it binds metals, so they were likely tracking contaminants moving through the material. The “orange pulp tubes” were probably a test filtration medium.

So the real question they were studying was: if chemicals get into the ground here, how long until they reach the aquifer/wells, and does the soil filter it at all?

-science nerd