Acid rain contains an excess of hydrogen ions (H⁺). One effect of acid rain is to deplete the soil of plant nutrients such as calcium (Ca²⁺), potassium (K⁺), and magnesium (Mg²⁺).
Offer a hypothesis to explain why acid rain washes these nutrients from the soil.
How might you test your hypothesis?

Question

Acid rain contains an excess of hydrogen ions (H⁺). One effect of acid rain is to deplete the soil of plant nutrients such as calcium (Ca²⁺), potassium (K⁺), and magnesium (Mg²⁺).

Offer a hypothesis to explain why acid rain washes these nutrients from the soil.

How might you test your hypothesis?

Accepted Answer

Hello everyone and welcome to today's video. So which of the following statements is true. Let's go over each of these statements in order to solve this problem. Beginning by Simon A. And ions are easily absorbed by plants because they are readily available positively charged and dissolved in water in the soil while an ions are negatively charged. So this answer choice is incorrect and we're going to cancel it out. Then we have although dissolved in water and negatively charged and ions are more difficult for plants to extract. Remember that plants are going to take up a lot of water, a lot of H20. And these and ions are dissolved in this water. So it makes them more, it makes it easier for them to be extracted. No more difficult because of this. This answer choice is incorrect and we're going to cancel it out. Then we have sea lions are positively deeply charged and they do not dissociating water but interact with clay and ion molecules making them more difficult to extract by plants. Remember that this cat ions are positively charged and they are very much attracted to these oxygen in the water because of this, they are going to dissociate very well in water. So we're going to cancel this out. And then we have cat ions are positively charged and dissolved in water but they interact with this clay and ion molecules making them more difficult to extract my plants. Let's break this apart. We have that Canadians are positively charged. This is true and they dissolve in water. However, there's this clay and ion molecules, there's this negatively charged molecules are going to be attracting these cat ions in the soil, making it more difficult to extract by plants. This makes sense, and this is actually going to be our correct answer choice. So we're going to highlight it as the final answer to our question. I really hope this video helped you and I have to see you on the next one.

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Key Concepts

Acid Rain

Nutrient Leaching

Soil Chemistry