Lucio nodded, seeming to appreciate the macabre balance sheet, and uncapped the beer bottles, levering them against a branch.
‘When you piss against it, you’re damaging its roots,’ Adamsberg protested, ‘and now you’re tearing off its bark.’
‘Not at all,’ Lucio retorted indignantly. ‘Urine’s full of nitrates, best thing there is for compost. Why d’you think I piss against the tree? Nitrates, that’s why, did you know that?’
‘I don’t know much, Lucio.’
.jpg)
In this case, folk wisdom is near the truth, because human orine contains urea, a substance that is produced industrially as a fertilizer. In 1828 Whöler was able to synthesize it artificially in a laboratory for the first time, messing up the vitalist theory. This theory defended that certain compounds were only able to be produced by living organisms
This Lucio is also right about nitrates, because the urea is a nitrogen compound whose symbol is CH₄N₂O
No comments:
Post a Comment