A question about hydroponics!?

Question

What is the purpose of hydroponics? Is it succsessful to this goal? What is the history of hydroponics? Please try to put the first and second question in one paragraph, and the last in another. If you can't thats fine. Please answer I really need to know now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:)

No I am not trying to copy & paste someone else's answer, Mr. tatle tale LOL!! :) , I have to handwrite it LOL. I can't find it anywhere else I've already done the rest

YEA, IT'S REALLY BAD WHEN YOU COME TH YAHOO ANSWERS FOR HOMEWORK HELP!!! Why do they have a section called HOMEWORK HELP????? I just can't figure that out!! LOL

Answer 1

Hydroponics, the growing of plants without soil, has developed from the findings of experiments carried out to determine what substances make plants grow and the composition of plants. Such work on plant constituents dates back as early as the 1600s. However, plants were being grown in a soilless culture far earlier than this. Hydroponics is at least as ancient as the pyramids. A primitive form has been carried on in Kashmir for centuries.
The process of hydroponics growing in our oceans goes back to about the time the earth was created. Hydroponic growing preceded soil growing. But as a farming tool, many believe it started in the ancient city of Babylon with its famous hanging gardens, which are listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and was probably one of the first successful attempts to grow plants hydroponically.
Many gardening writers have suggested that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were in fact an elaborate hydroponic system, into which fresh water rich in oxygen and nutrients was regularly pumped.

The earliest recorded scientific approach to discover plant constituents was in 1600 when Belgian Jan van Helmont showed in his classical experiment that plants obtain substances from water. He planted a 5-pound willow shoot in a tube containing 200 pounds of dried soil that was covered to keep out dust. After 5 years of regular watering with rainwater he found the willow shoot increased in weight by 160 pounds, while the soil lost less than 2 ounces. His conclusion that plants obtain substances for growth from water was correct. However, he failed to realize that they also require carbon dioxide and oxygen from the air.
The modern theory of chemistry, made great advances during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, subsequently revolutionized scientific research. Plants when analyzed consisted only of elements derived from water, soil and air.
In 1792 the brilliant English scientist Joseph Priestley discovered that plants placed in a chamber having a high level of "Fixed Air" (Carbon Dioxide) will gradually absorb the carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. Jean Ingen-Housz, some two years later, carried Priestley's work one step further, demonstrating that plants set in a chamber filled with carbon dioxide could replace the gas with oxygen within several hours if the chamber was placed in sunlight. Because sunlight alone had no effect on a container of carbon dioxide, it was certain that the plant was responsible for this remarkable transformation. Ingen-Housz went on to establish that this process worked more quickly in conditions of bright light, and that only the green parts of a plant were involved.

In 1804, Nicolas De Saussure proposed and published results of his investigations that plants are composed of mineral and chemical elements obtained from water, soil and air. By 1842 a list of nine elements believed to be essential to plant growth had been made out. These propositions were later verified by Jean Baptiste Boussingault (1851), a French scientist who began as a mineralogist employed by a mining company, turned to agricultural chemistry in the early 1850s. In his experiments with inert growing media. By feeding plants with water solutions of various combinations of soil elements growing in pure sand, quartz and charcoal (an inert medium not soil), to which were added solutions of known chemical composition. He concluded that water was essential for plant growth in providing hydrogen and that plant dry matter consisted of hydrogen plus carbon and oxygen which came from the air. He also stated that plants contain nitrogen and other mineral elements, and derive all of their nutrient requirements from the soil elements he used, he was then able to identify the mineral elements and what proportions were necessary to optimize plant growth, which was a major breakthrough.
Interest in practical application of this "Nutriculture" did not develop until about 1925 when the greenhouse industry expressed interest in its use. Greenhouse soils had to be replaced frequently to overcome problems of soil structure, fertility and pests. As a result, research workers became aware of the potential use of nutriculture to replace conventional soil cultural methods.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Dr. William F. Gericke of the University of California extended his laboratory experiments and work on plant nutrition to practical crops growing outside for large scale commercial applications. In doing so he termed these nutriculture systems "hydroponics". The word was derived from two Greek words, hydro, meaning water and ponos meaning labor - literally "water-working". His work is considered the basis for all forms of hydroponic growing, even though it was primarily limited to the water culture without the use of any rooting medium.

Hydroponics is now defined as the science of growing plants without the use of soil, but by use of an inert medium, such as gravel, sand, peat, vermiculite, perlite or sawdust, to which is added a nutrient solution containing all the essential elements needed by the plant for its normal growth and development. Since many hydroponic methods employ some type of medium that contains organic material like peat or sawdust, it is often termed "soilless culture", while water culture alone would be true hydroponics.

Today, hydroponics is the term used to describe the several ways in which plants can be raised without soil. These methods, also known generally as soilless gardening, include raising plants in containers filled with water and any one of a number of non-soil mediums - including gravel, sand, vermiculite, clay and other more exotic mediums, such as crushed rocks or bricks, shards of cinder blocks, and even Styrofoam.

Dr. Gericke's application of hydroponics soon proved itself by providing food for troops stationed on non-arable islands in the Pacific in the early 1940s.

Recent surveys have indicated that there are over 1,000,000 household soilless culture units operating in the United States for the production of food alone. Russia, France, Canada, South Africa, Holland, Japan, Australia and Germany are among other countries where hydroponics is receiving the attention it deserves.

Answer 2

The definition of hydroponics is: the method of growing plants using hydroponic nutrient solutions, in water without the use of any soil. The plants can either be grown with the roots directly in the mineral nutrient solution or within an inert medium such as mineral wool or clay pebbles.

There are many advantages of using hydroponics and this is why we are seeing such an increase in the use of the method all over the world
Water is circulated in the system and as a result there is a reduced water requirement
There is no requirement for soil
Nutrient levels can be fully controlled and therefore is a reduced nutrient requirement
Very stable and high yields
Pests and diseases easier to control
Ease of harvesting

Hydroponics is being used more and more in modern farming techniques, but it has in fact been used for centuries, with many civilisations utilising the gardening technique to produce crops in unfavourable growing conditions. Hydroponics actually means working water in Latin, Hydro being water and ponos being labour.

The popularity of hydroponics has grown enormously in the last couple of decades with an increasing awareness of unfavourable growing conditions creating a necessity to utilise more efficient growing techniques. And of course the increased knowledge of hydroponics has meant we can create bigger yields and produce better crops.

Answer 3

Hydroponics is simply growing plants in nutrient-laden running water. On some plants such as water chestnuts and watercress it seems to work fine commercially.
The history of partial-hydroponics starts with the Egyptians placing some plants(in very loose weaved reed baskets) into the flood water eddies of the Nile river and letting the nutrient rich river water feed the plants.
Hydroponics has not been a very commercially successful endeavor overall.
The exception to this rule is the illegal growing of drug producing plants clandestinely under artificial lights--which ends a lot of folks in jail.

Answer 4

The purpose of hydroponics is to maximize growth in controlled conditions. It is successful because artificial lighting and artificial nutrients can be used to used to speed growth versus natural sunlight and soil. The plants can receive up to 24 hours of sunlight, and at a greater luminosity and improved light spectrum. Immersion of the roots in a nutrient solution can increase nutrient uptake. Hydroponics have existed since the 50s when artificial lights became advanced enough to make them possible.

Answer 5

i dont know, but if I were in school and had to find this information for an assignment, I'd open a book & look for it. You should try it sometime. It's pretty bad when you come to yahoo answers for homework answers & then expect the answerer to compose the answer in a certain way, also.

Answer 6

Hi. Here is a better answer than I can write. : http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=hydroponics&gwp=16

Answer 7

Need to copy and paste someone's answer for school assignment huh? IM TELLING!!!!

Answer 8

get off yahoo answers and do your homework yourself!!!!!