Post #3858110

2026-07-16 10:51 UTC

Just been helping my son with chemistry, and accidentally flipped the narrative. He was looking at the Haber–Bosch process for making ammonia. I asked him about what ammonia's good for, the timing of the development, the timing of World War 1... He was so suddenly interested like he's never been interested in chemistry before. Then we got onto older ways of extracting nitrates from urine, something that Germany also had an advantage in because they drank so much beer. And then to the initial extraction of phosphorus. And then to calculating that, if only one person were involved, it'd take about a decade of collecting urine to replicate Brand and Kunckel's work. Apparently the chem teacher never talks about things like this. Even though we've been talking about the importance of doing so since the 1990s, and it's supposedly REQUIRED by the national curriculum. #school #chemistry #histSci #histSciTech

Replies (4)

@mdione@en.osm.town 2026-07-16 12:04

@libroraptor@mastodon.nz > Then we got onto older ways of extracting nitrates from urine, something that Germany also had an advantage in because they drank so much beer. are you kidding me!>!>!>!?!> [citation needed]! :)

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@RandamuMaki@mstdn.social 2026-07-16 12:11

@libroraptor@mastodon.nz Explain the 'why', not just the 'how', and you keep students interested. It's not that difficult.

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@twobiscuits@graz.social 2026-07-16 12:17

@libroraptor@mastodon.nz you could just study the life of Fritz Haber and you'd have chemistry and 20th century history pretty much covered, not to mention the dilemmas of technological progress

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@Photo55@mastodon.social 2026-07-16 12:55

@libroraptor@mastodon.nz 1. When Penicillin was new (a while after nitrogen fixation by heat and pressure) it was scarce and was recovered from patients' urine. To aid this, soldiers were ordered _not_ to drink beer while taking it. This has survived into legend as a poorly-based general prohibition. Point: unless it is something beer contains or produces, it is easier to get it back from a smaller volume of p. 2. You might point him at the famine expected then averted by synthetic N fixation, then ...

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