nitrogen
"Nitrogen is Like carbon, nitrogen is an essential element for life processes."
"Nitrogen is like a cold-blooded, lethargic person--it combines with other substances very reluctantly and with but little energy. Oxygen is just its opposite in this respect: it gives itself freely; it is "Hail, fellow; well met!" with most substances, and it enters into co-partnership with them on such a large scale that it forms nearly one half of the material of the earth's crust."
"You can think of a DNA molecule as a ladder. The sugar and the phosphates make up the sides of the ladder while the nitrogen bases are like the rungs."
"The nitrogen cycle is like a French movie; it's difficult to understand, overly-complicated, and in desperate need of translation. One reason the nitrogen cycle is so tricky is the terminology. Denitrification, nitrification, ammonification, nitrogen fixation: they all blur together like the colors in an impressionist painting."
"The nitrogen cycle is like the phosphorus and carbon cycle because they both show how important substances are moved around in the environment."
in which soil organisms are the workers. They take atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen as raw materials and put them together to form nitrates(NO3).
"How a rain of fertilizer caused a reign of fire Nitrogen deposition is like fertilizer raining down out of the sky. Just as the fertilizer that people put on their lawns causes them to be lush and grow quickly, atmospheric deposi-tion of excess nitrogen can cause invasive grasses biomass to increase exponentially in natural areas, where they don't belong. "
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