From Nitrogen, To Nitrogen...

Feb. 6 – 10, 2012

Last week in our general science class  we’ve studied about the different cycles in ecology

such as the water cycle , the carbon , oxygen cycle . and the nitrogen cycle.   Our teacher 

told us to present about one of the different cycles and make a story about it . So she went

around and assigned what cycle  would belong to each group. We were hoping that we’d get the water cycle  since  it’s so easy and we’re already very familiar about that cycle since

we’ve been studying about it since elementary.  The cycle that got assigned to us was the

carbon , oxygen  cycle  . Even though we didn’t get the cycle that we want we still did our

best to make a presentation about the cycle that was given to us.  

During the day of the presentation when we presented ours I think it was ok but I also think that it was quite hilarious .  I enjoyed watching the other group’s presentation I think the stories that they’ve come up with were quite interesting. I also noticed that I understand the cycles better because there’s a story in it.  After all the presentations, our teacher  discussed about the different cycles that have been presented. 

The cycle that took my interest the most was the nitrogen cycle because it amazes me how the atmospheric nitrogen  from the atmosphere  gets into our system.  Our teacher told us that the cycle goes like this:  

From the atmosphere the atmospheric nitrogen  will go down to land either by lightning or rain, then once it’s on the ground nitrogen fixing bacteria which live in legumes will turn the nitrogen into a useful substance for plants such as nitrates and nitrites.  Then the plants will absorb the nitrites.  After the plants have absorbed the nitrites, humans will eat the plants and that’s how nitrogen will be included in our system.  

But since it’s a cycle we need to return the nitrogen into the atmosphere  so when we die decomposers will break us down into ammonia, this process is called as ammonification  then ammonium shall again turn into nitrites by the help of nitrifying bacteria, and this process is called nitrification, then once it returned into being a nitrite denitrifying bacteria  will turn the nitrites back into atmospheric nitrogen and the cycle goes on.