"Cold plasma could transform the sustainable farms of the future"

By: Steven Ornes

The article starts off by telling us about a physicist called Stephan Reuter who uses his knowledge of energy and matter to improve upon medical technology. He was then invited to a greenhouse in Quebec to help the greenhouse reduce its carbon footprint. The article then goes on to tell us about fertilizer, and nitrogen, and other important things that plants need. Reuter talks about how if the greenhouse wants the fertilizer to truly be green, they need it to be renewable. The article then talks about what plasma is and about how it is used in everyday things like lamps and computers and other things. The article then talks about how plasma could be used as fertilizer instead of ammonia, the same sort of experiments led by Biochemist Alexander Volkov showed that plants that used the plasma as the fertilizer grew at a much faster rate.

This article has a big effect on society because it is telling us about people who are trying to reduce the carbon footprint of growing food on a commercial scale. This is a big step in reducing the world's carbon footprint which is another big step in saving the earth until or if we find another suitable planet or place to live on.

Some pros about the article are that it had a lot of details and it backed up every claim it made with lots of quotes and research data. Another pro was that it used certain pictures to help convey some of the ideas which I found helpful. One big con that I noticed was that the article was too long and didn't get to that point right away, they used too many details and I found myself bored because of all the useless info that was in the article.

posted for G. Smart by C. Ippolito