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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Atmospheric nitrogen is more or less inert; two atoms form a N2 molecule that is very stable; the bond between them is well balanced. Nitrogen in the form of nitrates in soil will easily break free in water solutions and form N^2- ions; plants can incorporate those easily into more complex molecules since it is unstable and needs to form compounds with something.
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