So, I recently watched a video regarding the first synthesized fertilizer, and I thought it was pretty interesting that farmland was basically screwed if they didn’t figure out how to get more nitrogen into dirt.
But then I thought about it, I was taught that plants make the bulk of themselves out of carbon, which they absorb from the air in carbon dioxide. Why is the same not true with nitrogen? Our atmosphere is a little more than 2/3rds nitrogen after all.
I tried looking it up, but the result was basically “Because nitrogen in the atmosphere is in a gaseous form” but that wasn’t really helpful.
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You know how cling wrap sticks to itself really well? And if you pull out a lot of cling wrap, it is almost impossible to pull all of it apart at the same time? The Nitrogen in air (N2) is similar to that. It sticks together very strongly. Nitrogen sticks to itself about 3 times stronger than it sticks to a single Hydrogen. It takes a lot of energy to break apart N2, so plants instead get the Nitrogen from sources where it is bonded more weakly with other atoms, like nitrates (bonded to Oxygen) and ammonia (bonded to Hydrogen).
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