Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
....
What are you on about? Are you looking for the fate of the applied NO3-,
or what?

nitrogen isotopes used in studies of actual
nitrogen uptake by plants.

yes, the fate of applied nitrogen compounds,
but actual studies of tagged compounds using
nitrogen isotopes.

I've heard that people use isotopes for these kinds of experiments.


Hmm. Bit tricky that. Natural Nitrogen (N) consists of two stable
isotopes, nitrogen-14, which makes up the vast majority of naturally
occurring nitrogen, and nitrogen-15.
Stable huh? Well they're out.

ah, but that is ok, just that if most natural nitrogen
is N14 then you use a high portion of N15 and then track
how much of that gets adsorbed. this must be what the
experiment i saw in passing did because they didn't say
anything about it being difficult or very short term.

or they were using other atom isotopes for tracking...
can't say for sure.


Fourteen radioactive isotopes (radioisotopes)
[radioactive! That's more like it]
have also been found so far, with atomic masses ranging from 10 to 25,
and one nuclear isomer, 11mN. All of these radioisotopes are
short-lived, with the longest-lived one being nitrogen-13 with a
half-life of 9.965 minutes.
Nine minutes? You'll have to be quick about your experiment ;O))

All of the others have half-lives below 7.15 seconds, with most of these
being below five-eighths of a second.
Oh, how the time flies!

heh, good to know.


songbird