Why Pee is Cool - entry #6 - "Pee, Our Connection with the Earth's Metabolic Cycle"

Here, in the final PeePeePost, is where we bring all we have learned together and find out how the act of peeing unites us with our planet.

sciseekclaimtoken-4eab48c19bc77 Any form of life that we know of needs two basic things.  The first is matter, as life has to be made of something.  The second is energy, so life can do something with that matter (e.g., move around, reproduce, watch trailer park boys).  Most life on earth gets its energy from the sun.  All life on earth gets its matter from...from earth, duh!

As we learned in the last PeePost, the atoms in your body are no different from the atoms in rocks/oceans/air/etc.  Additionally, the composition of our bodies is close-ish to that of the earth's crust!!

Graph of abundances of chemical elements in the earths' upper continental crust.  We are made mostly of the really abundant stuff in the upper left (e.g., oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, etc.)

Because of those two facts, I like to think of any kind of earth life as little tiny earth particles--walking, talking, peeing, sometimes neighborly little chunks of the earth's crust.

Humans are earth particles.

Why Pee is Cool - entry #3 - "Explosive Urination" or "Gunpowder Comes from Pee!!!"

So far we have learned what gives pee its color and smell, and now we will delve into the explosive way pee has changed the course of history.  That's right, pee can be turned into an explosive!

To find out how we have to travel in our minds back to the beginning of human civilization--specifically, the domestication of animals.  One thing that large domesticated animals like horses and cows produce in bulk is urine (pee pee!).  When these animals are kept inside some sort of shelter, their pee seeps into the dry plant-less ground beneath their feet, where microorganisms turn urea into ammonia.  The little pee-digesting organisms don't stop there though, they combine the ammonia with oxygen, eventually giving rise to the nitrate ion, in a process known as nitrification.

Nitrification:

Ammonia + Oxygen →  Nitrates

or

NH₃ + 2 O₂  → NO₃^- + H⁺ + H₂O

or

Nitrification of Ammonia.  Note: animals pee out urea, but  microbes turn urea into ammonia, which then undergoes nitrification.

Why Pee is Cool - entry #2 - "Why Does Pee Smell?" or "Aroma of Life"

In Germany, nothing marks the beginning of spring like asparagus!  Running from April through the end of June, asparagus season (spargelzeit) is a big deal in Germany.  Here is me happily participating in this wonderful German tradition:

Me, about to have an asparagus aneurysm

As you may know, after eating asparagus, your pee can smell pretty gross.

Bathroom Safety Tip #1: never inhale bathroom-related vapors directly, always gently waft them