The study of soil erosion by water, wind and gravity, or their various combinations, has a long tradition of using experiments. While ideal to simplify a complex system, experiments also draw much criticism because of exactly this distance from the natural settings. Designing experiments considering this tension between the overarching research question and the potential and limitations of experiments is essential for the success of any research project using experiments. This short course explores principal constraints of experiments and encourages participants to identify the opportunities experiments offer them to address their research question. We would therefore request that participants bring short presentations of their experiments to the short course.