the.com/nitrogen
the gas you're constantly inhaling and ignoring, secretly running the whole planet
means A colorless, odorless gas that makes up about 78% of Earth's atmosphere and is essential to all living things as a building block of proteins and DNA.
from From the French nitrogène, coined in the late 18th century from the Greek nitron (a kind of mineral salt, the root behind 'niter,' i.e. saltpetre) plus the suffix -gen, 'producing' — so literally 'niter-maker,' because the element was identified as a component of nitric acid and saltpetre. Its earlier name, 'azote,' came from Greek meaning 'without life' (a-zoe), since unlike oxygen it couldn't sustain a flame or a breath — a poetic irony, given how much of life it quietly builds.
- air share
- makes up 78 percent of every breath
- bond strength
- its triple bond is nearly unbreakable
- feeds billions
- synthetic fixation grows half the world's food
- liquid form
- boils at minus 196 Celsius
- discovery name
- first called noxious air for suffocating mice
haber-bosch process — industrial synthesis producing ~500 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer annually since 1909
liquid nitrogen — cryogenic liquid at −196°c used in medicine, food freezing, and industrial applications worldwide
nitrogen cycle — earth's biogeochemical process converting atmospheric n₂ through bacteria, plants, and soil globally