the.com/nitrate
the molecule that fertilizes your fields, cures your bacon, and occasionally levels city blocks
means A salt or ester of nitric acid containing the NO₃ group, widely used in fertilizers, food preservatives, and explosives.
from From nitric acid plus the chemical suffix '-ate,' which marks a salt of an acid. 'Nitric' traces back through Latin 'nitrum' to Greek 'nitron,' a word for natural soda or mineral salts — itself likely borrowed from an earlier Egyptian or Semitic source for the natron the Egyptians used in embalming. So the name carries an ancient memory of salt dug from desert lakebeds, long before chemists pinned it to a particular cluster of nitrogen and oxygen.
- explosive cousin
- Ammonium nitrate caused the 2020 Beirut port catastrophe
- pink trick
- Keeps cured meats red instead of grey-brown
- groundwater villain
- Farm runoff makes well water unsafe for infants
- old film
- Nitrate movie stock burns underwater and self-ignites
- plant fuel
- Plants devour it as their main nitrogen source
chile saltpeter deposits — world's largest natural nitrate reserves, supplied 65% of global demand in early 1900s
haber-bosch process — industrial nitrogen fixation producing ammonia/nitrates, feeds ~40% of world population today
gunpowder — potassium nitrate mixed with charcoal and sulfur, used in cannons and explosives since 9th century china