Have you ever tilled the soil in your backyard? When wet it is sticky but feels like concrete when dry. Jin Cho, a junior at Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School found in the UK Department of Plant & Soil Sciences’ Soil Physics Lab that soils in developed neighborhoods can only take up 10-20% of the water that can easily infiltrate in good farm soil. The reason: Developers remove the good top 12 inches. Jin won 1^st prize at The Kentucky American Water Science Fair (district level), and 4^th at the Central Kentucky Regional Science & Engineering Fair. She will participate at I-SWEEEP in Houston, TX, this week (May 3-8, 2017) as well as at INTEL in Los Angeles in May 2017. Jin is mentored by UK PSS faculty, Ole Wendroth.