How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future

by Vaclav Smil

The element is abundant—it makes up nearly 80 percent of the atmosphere, organisms live submerged in it—and yet it is a key limiting factor in crop productivity as well as in human growth. This

How many vegans enjoying the salad are aware of its substantial fossil fuel pedigree?

only a third of the applied nitrogen is actually used by rice; the rest is lost to the atmosphere and to ground and stream waters.78 Given that we are expecting at

Wow

The total energy requirement of global steel production in 2019 was about 34 exajoules, or about 6 percent of the world’s primary energy supply.

Tension is a different matter: a pulling force of just 2 to 5 megapascals (less than it takes to tear human skin) can break concrete apart. That is why the large-scale commercial adoption of concrete in construction took place only after gradual advances in steel reinforcement made it suitable for structural parts subject to high tension.

Airport runways (up to 3.5 kilometers long) have reinforced concrete foundations, deepest (up to 1.5 meters) in the touchdown zone to handle the repeated pounding of hundreds of thousands of landings every year by airplanes weighing up to about 380 tons (the Airbus 380).