Incubation Experiment
We all know that we are supposed to eat a balanced diet containing the Recommended Dietary Allowance of vitamins and minerals to maintain our health. Humans, and all other organisms, require major and minor nutrients in well-defined quantities for healthy growth. Marine phytoplankton, free floating marine plants, harvest the energy of the sun to fuel their growth, but they still need nutrients as the building blocks of their new cells. The basic building blocks for marine plankton are carbon dioxide, water, nitrate, and phosphate. The ocean generally has plenty of water and carbon dioxide, but can often be depleted in nitrate or phosphate. If we think about photosynthesis as a balanced chemical reaction it is easy to use chemical stoichiometry to understand this limitation, Continue reading
