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Article: Knop's solution is not what it seems.(plant nutrition)
- Article from:
- Science Activities
- Article date:
- September 22, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The spring 2001 issue of Science Activities featured an article by Michael J. Demchik titled "Experiencing Experimentation and Project Design" (25-27). Although the article described plant nutrition experiments, a fundamental part of science instruction, unfortunately, it conveyed several misconceptions about the best solution to use when performing plant experiments.
A key function of plants is to "mine" soils for the essential mineral nutrients they require. Humans and other animals also depend on plants to provide most of the mineral nutrients that occur naturally in the food chain. Adding mineral nutrients to crops via fertilizers and liming is a major ...