I remembered this from a long gone grade eight science class. The teacher had asked for a short explanation of how Lightning helped plants grow. Most of the kids had some variation of the nitrogen production aspect.
Not so for little Robbie. His honest and sincerely believed answer was:
The lightning makes thunder. That loud noise scares all the animals so badly that they poop. Poop is good fertilizer.
mike
Actually, lightning creates ozone (O3) which breaks down to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) which breaks down to water. It's been a long time secret of people in crop competition, they add some hydrogen peroxide to the water fed to the plants. I'm not sure how much, i think it's a tablespoon of 3% per gallon or something like that. Not much hydrogen peroxide created by lightning makes it to the ground anymore since we started polluting the air so much, because the ozone and hydrogen peroxide will break down toxins and bacteria. They use ozone in Europe to purify city water, they think we're crazy for using chlorine.
The 3% stuff at the supermarket is not food grade.
m II wrote:
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If so, someone should straighten these people out...
mike
Could you be a little more vague in your response? Like maybe:
http://www
Ha,ha,ha, how's this:
Find the answer to your question at the following URL: http://
No intention to be vague. Sorry if I caused any confusion. My obviously failed point was that the majority of sites found by the search engine mention nitrogen fixation caused by lightning strikes as being of benefit to plant growth.
mike
Plants need nitrogen to grow. Lighting will produce many compounds from nitrogen gas in air. The nitrogen in air will transform into NxOx. Plants can grow well when NxOx reacts with water.
If a framer counts on nitrogen from lighting as a meager source of nitrogen he best be reasing threes that take decades to mature becuse the nitrogen fixed by natural processes is tiny and largely unavailable to most crops. In the case of alflafla it is too deep in the soil in the case of lighting it too little and often too late in the season to do any good.
Gordon
Gordon Couger Biosystems& Ag Engineering (retired) Oklahoma State University
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