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Comment by combatentropy | Hacker News Reader

Another interesting chemical interaction is how lightning causes rain to be more nourishing to plants. It separates the nitrogen from the air, which combines with oxygen to form nitrogen dioxide. "Nitrogen dioxide dissolves in water, creating nitric acid, which forms nitrates. The nitrates fall to the ground in raindrops and seep into the soil in a form that can be absorbed by plants." --- https://wxguys.ssec.wisc.edu/2018/07/09/lightning/

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This has been folk knowledge in Japan for thousands of years. Rice paddies are traditionally planted in places with a propensity to lightning storms, a fact so well known that it reduces land values in suburbs built on old paddy land (there are other downsides to that land, but this is one).

Also, the word for "thunder" (雷) is written as "rain" (雨) over a "rice paddy" (田), and the word for "lightning" (稲妻) is "rice plant's (稲) wife (妻)".

Off topic but do you have a resource for your second paragraph? I find this etymology fascinating!

Not sure if this is what you had in mind, but, for example:

rain - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/雨

field - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/田

thunder - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/雷

rice - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/稲

wife - https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/妻

lightning - http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?1MDJ%B0%F0%BA%CA

Those would probably be more helpful as Wiktionary links:

rain - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/雨

field - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/田

thunder - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/雷

Note that the "glyph origin" section describes 雷 as an ancient simplification of the phono-semantic compound 靁, where 畾 indicates the pronunciation. Any relation to rice paddies is probably a post-hoc rationalization.

rice - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/稲

wife - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/妻

lightning - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/稲妻

This is actually common, folks think Kanji are random strokes, but they tell stories and tend to make sense. Understanding the relations makes it easy to remember.

Hey, do you know about what scent is used in mineral water in Japan. Our friend gave us some last year and we were amazed how primal and fresh it smelled, trying to trace it all the time.

From the description it could be petrichor, but we had this similar smell once coming off ocean island once (Kawau, NZ) so we not sure

Curious to know what mineral water you are speaking about

On mobile, but they also nailed lightning helping mushrooms grow.

https://phys.org/news/2010-04-lightning-mushrooms.amp

Amazing. Here’s a newer research that unveiled the cause is cuts and scratches inside https://api.intechopen.com/chapter/pdf-download/62393

I'm usually a lurker and rarely comment but yours was such a nice little informal comment that I had to say something. Thanks for bringing a smile to my face :)

Nice! And speaking of etymology, my favourite trivia from the article: The word was coined from Greek petros, meaning "stone", and ichor, meaning "the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods". I always wondered what the second half meant.

I think it's common knowledge that rain water is excellent for plants. But I don't think many people know the mechanism of action. Although I suspected water somehow picked up nitrogen in the air, I wasn't aware exactly how. Thank you for sharing!

In the modern era, nitrogen dioxide is a pollutant; it's also produced by most combustion processes. Too much of it results in "acid rain" which is harmful to plants.

Can't have too much or too little.

Lol this reminds me of what my dietitian cousin is known to say: everything in moderation... including moderation ; )

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