Date: Wed, 08 Jan 97 18:54:00 -0600 From: robert.pogson@mwcs.mb.ca (ROBERT POGSON) To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg124$foo@default> Subject: Re: Nitrogen uptake
A physicist would do it one of two ways:1)assay the available nitrogen
in the environment over time or 2)assay the nitrogen in the plants as
a function of time. I was tangentially involved in 2) a while back as
a means to measure protein in grain. There is a chemical procedure requiring
destruction and conversion to ammonia followed by titration. Being physicists,
we wanted instant gratification so we bombarded living matter with 30 Mev
protons making some of the N14 into N13 and watching it decay. This was
non-destructive for seeds; I don't think we tried plants. A gadget was built
with a conveyor belt that would give accurate results in a few minutes and
could do hundreds of tests in rapid succession. An infrared technique was
eventually installed in grain handling facilities in Canada. I guess a
desktop machine was more handy than a 60 ton cyclotron ;-).
... nfx v2.8 [C0000] Bureaucracy: relic from past civilizations. Purpose:unkn
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