by jvandonsel on 8/30/23, 12:07 PM with 46 comments
by unlikelymordant on 9/1/23, 9:47 AM
by Torkel on 9/1/23, 1:02 PM
Cell movement seems to be impacted by electricity in humans. Perhaps the same is true for plants, and can be part of the explanation behind this?
(Easier to digest version of the link, but in Swedish: https://www.chalmers.se/aktuellt/nyheter/mc2-sa-kan-elektric...)
by K0balt on 9/1/23, 10:04 AM
I have noticed something quite interesting: in my nursery, actual rain stimulates germination, leaf formation, flowering, and budding in a way that collected rainwater applied over identical timeframes in identical quantities using sprinklers that approximate rain drop physics fails to do. Well-water performs roughly the same as collected rainwater.
I’m speculating that there is some other signal present with actual rain that is lacking in the surrogate process. It could easily be electrical charge.
by regularfry on 9/1/23, 10:03 AM
by syllablehq on 9/1/23, 1:42 PM
The control plants should have a non-electrical-conducting wire planted in a similar manner. And in fact, another control should use a copper wire that is cut in various places to interrupt the circuit (and reconnected to be rigid with a non-conducting material)
Without those controls, the effect could be simply a chemical interaction with metal as others here are suggesting. Or even just an effect from how the plant is potted with a wire placed in the pot. Maybe the wire just adds air or makes it easier for the roots to grow or something who knows. Interesting.
by znpy on 9/1/23, 11:26 AM
Dumb question: could it just be that copper rods in the soil are just providing “copper” to the plants in the same field?
by dghughes on 9/1/23, 10:37 AM
Most above ground plants are easy it's the root vegetables that are hard to grow. You pile on nitrogen and the tops of plants grow, even root vegetables' top leaves grow but little of the root. Corn can be a pain it needs a lot of water and even more nitrogen.
Even if you have the perfect amount of nutrients and the pH is good for nutrient distribution a carrot can be stopped by a single pebble in the way or if the soil too compact.
by _a_a_a_ on 9/1/23, 3:10 PM
Meta comment. I'm a software dev but consider myself a scientist, at least in part, and I don't like dismissals like this. It's true we need to understand the underlying mechanisms of things, that's what science is about. It is not (in my view) about this, where we say we have no plausible underlying mechanism so we shouldn't be interested. There are times when we need to take that tack such as with likely crankery[1], but the first thing you do is check it out.
It's not a scientific attitude to say "I can't see how it works so screw it"
> “Does it help it better photosynthesize? Does it help it better uptake nutrients? Does it speed up the cellular metabolism of the plant? No one seems to have that answer,”
As someone else has pointed out, it's been suspected for decades that electric fields affect healing (I remember hearing about this in the 1980s where it was provisionally found to help bone growth in broken bones). There seems to be no plausible mechanism and it may turn out to be false – but it may not. You dismiss after you've taken a look, not before.
Edit: As mentioned, this is a meta comment. It's not about plant growth, it's about the 'right' attitude.
[1] if all perpetual motion machines so far have failed then it's likely the next one isn't going to work either. There is a cost to looking into peculiar things, but a potential benefit as well.
by tengbretson on 9/1/23, 3:09 PM
Perhaps this electric field is used by plants as some kind of feedback mechanism telling them how tall they are, and by disrupting that field with an antenna we are somehow tricking the plant into thinking it is taller or shorter than it really is and it responds to that by growing more vigorously.
by paulkrush on 9/1/23, 3:14 PM