Although I can appreciate the benefits of grass around the home, I am not a big fan of big lawns. They demand lots of energy and water, and in return, our family, which consists entirely of humans, cannot eat grass. For this reason, we have devoted most of our backyard to a vegetable garden, shrubs,... Continue Reading →
Using an analysis of urine and some basic arithmetic, I realized yesterday how many useful compounds we unfortunately flush down the toilet. Based on the fact that an individual's daily output of urine contains about 3 g of potassium ion, 2.5 grams(g) of phosphate, 16 g of urea, 3 g of amino acids, a gram of ammonia, a... Continue Reading →
Ammonium nitrate, NH4NO3, was used as a fertilizer before people realized that it was potentially explosive. And to this day people who should no better are still unaware of its dangers. Between 1911 and 1921, a German company BASF was producing a mixture of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate in the town of Oppau . The... Continue Reading →
