We describe an undergraduate experiment for measuring the electrical conductivity of the earth with a four-electrode Wenner array, at scales approaching tens of meters. When analyzed in the context of a simple two-layer model of the earth, such measurements yield information about what is underground. In our case, this is the depth of the water table and the electrical conductivity of both the upper dry layer and the lower water-saturated layer. We also performed conductivity measurements in a water tank, to test the theory in a known situation. The experiments are discussed in the context of several boundary value problems in electricity and magnetism. (C) 1999 American Association of Physics Teachers. [References: 13]
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