Nitrogen Quotes - Page 2

• Before the first atomic bomb test, scientists took the time to calculate whether the blast would ignite the nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere and incinerate us all. The risk was low and the test went off, but Rees wonders what the odds would have had to be to discourage the bomb makers.

  Dennis Overbye

  Funny, Science, Technology

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• Each summer, for example, nitrogen and phosphate washing from farmlands in the Mississippi Valley enter the Gulf of Mexico, creating a massive algal bloom covering some 16,000 square kilometers. As the blooms die off, this area-roughly the size of New Jersey-is so deprived of oxygen that no fish survive.

  Lester R. Brown

  Summer, Squares, Oxygen

  Lester R. Brown, Michael Renner (2014). “Vital Signs 1999-2000: The Environmental Trends That Are Shaping Our Future”, p.25, Routledge

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• And how could I believe that Australian wine was automatically inferior to wine sourced from other regions on the planet when I had never drunk anything but liquid nitrogen?

  Matt Haig

  Believe, Wine, Drunk

  Matt Haig (2014). “The Humans: A Novel”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• From the results so far obtained it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the long-range atoms arising from collision of alpha particles with nitrogen are not nitrogen atoms but probably atoms of hydrogen, or atoms of mass 2. If this be the case, we must conclude that the nitrogen atom is disintegrated under the intense forces developed in a close collision with a swift alpha particle, and that the hydrogen atom which is liberated formed a constituent part of the nitrogen nucleus.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Hydrogen Atom, Long, Atoms

  "Collisions of *3 Particles with Light Atoms. IV. An Anomalous Effect in Nitrogen," Philosophical Magazine, June 1919

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• Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones out of our minds come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic details of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive thoughts to the solid ground of black soil.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Coffee, Fall, Black

  "Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within". Book by Natalie Goldberg, 1986.

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• For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.

  Neal Stephenson

  Oxygen, Atmosphere, Trying

  "In the Kindom of Mao Bell" by Neal Stephenson, www.wired.com. February 1, 1994.

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• Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen.

  Ronald Reagan

  Funny, Land, Growing

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• The trade of chemist (fortified, in my case, by the experience of Auschwitz), teaches you to overcome, indeed to ignore, certain revulsions that are neither necessary or congenital: matter is matter, neither noble nor vile, infinitely transformable, and its proximate origin is of no importance whatsoever. Nitrogen is nitrogen, it passes miraculously from the air into plants, from these into animals, and from animals into us; when its function in our body is exhausted, we eliminate it, but it still remains nitrogen, aseptic, innocent.

  Primo Levi

  Animal, Air, Overcoming

  Primo Levi (1995). “The Periodic Table”

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• It's crazy, if you think about it. The God of the universe - the creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor - loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss.

  Francis Chan

  Song, Crazy, Sacrifice

  Francis Chan (2013). “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God”, p.2, David C Cook

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