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zinc & pecans

updated wed 21 dec 11

 

wynpotter on tue 20 dec 11


Peggy below is a link to growing pecans
http://www.texaspecantrees.com/pecan_trees_zinc_requirements.html

I going to go a bit further because I believe there may be a basic
misunderstanding of some of the minerals that are part of our everyday life=
.
Zinc as well as many minerals are nessarry for life.
You may see a reference to Zinc and not understand that the ref maybe
to the metal zinc or to another compound like zinc oxide or zinc
sulphate. There are 100's of different compounds that have different
uses in different industries and have nothing to do with ceramics but
have other compound of those elements that can be used safely in
developing glazes.
Generally in ceramics we are designing a glaze, which is a glass, with
many different minerals that will melt at a certain temperature. We use
Zinc oxide in some glazes but it changes in the firing to a new material.
It would be helpful for ceramics courses to have a simple overview of
that shows the uses and reasons for the material to be used.
Some folks throw up there hands when shown a chemistry equation but a
simple description of how the minerals work would allow a better
understanding of the natural processes and materials we use.
With out knowing what form the zinc is in there is no way to comment on
the uses.
Hope this helps.
Wyndham