question: How did the creation of dynamite lead up to the creation of fertilizers?
comment: Basically the answer is nitrogen. It's important in your explosives, and its crucially important in your fertilizer. Do some work with nitrogen relating to explosives, learn more about nitrogen, ?????, learn how to produce/utilize nitrogen in your fertilizers effectively to increase crop yield. The ????? there represents years and years of nitrogen research on a vast array of topics.
passages: Dynamite, a safe to handle blend of nitroglycerin and diatomaceous earth was patented in 1867 by Alfred Nobel. Dynamite increased productivity of mining, tunneling, road building, construction and demolition and made projects such as the Panama Canal possible.
   In 1927 Erling Johnson developed an industrial method for producing nitrophosphate, also known as the Odda process after his Odda Smelteverk of Norway. The process involved acidifying phosphate rock (from Nauru and Banaba Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean) with nitric acid to produce phosphoric acid and calcium nitrate which, once neutralized, could be used as a nitrogen fertilizer.
  
  Section::::Key figures in Europe.:Industry.
  
  Section::::Key figures in Europe.:Industry.:British.
   The developing sciences of chemistry and Paleontology, combined with the discovery of coprolites in commercial quantities in East Anglia, led Fisons and Packard to develop sulfuric acid and fertilizer plants at Bramford, and Snape, Suffolk in the 1850s to create superphosphates, which were shipped around the world from the port at Ipswich. By 1871 there were about 80 factories making superphosphate.
  
  After World War I these businesses came under competitive pressure from naturally produced guano, primarily found on the Pacific islands, as their extraction and distribution had become economically attractive.
   Another of Pelouze's students was the young Alfred Nobel, who returned to the Nobel family's defunct armaments factory and began experimenting with the material around 1860; it did, indeed prove to be very difficult to discover how to handle it safely. In the 1860s Nobel received several patents around the world for mixtures, devices and manufacturing methods based on the explosive power of nitroglycerine, eventually leading to the invention of dynamite, ballistite and gelignite from which he made a fortune.
   John Bennet Lawes, an English entrepreneur, (view timeline of his life and work) began to experiment on the effects of various manures on plants growing in pots in 1837, and a year or two later the experiments were extended to crops in the field. One immediate consequence was that in 1842 he patented a manure formed by treating phosphates with sulphuric acid, and thus was the first to create the artificial manure industry. In the succeeding year he enlisted the services of Joseph Henry Gilbert, who had studied under Liebig at the University of Giessen, as director of research at the Rothamsted Experimental Station which he founded on his estate. To this day, the Rothamsted research station the pair founded still investigates the impact of inorganic and organic fertilizers on crop yields.
   Section::::History.
  
  The first agrogeology project to receive major funding was the Tanzania-Canada project (1989). This project took place in southern Tanzania as a way to assist farmers in increasing soil productivity by finding and testing local raw materials. However, the use of raw materials as fertilizer is a practice that dates back to the 1800s. Erling Bjarne Johnson discovered the nitrophosphate process in the years 1927-28.
  
  Section::::Rock Phosphate as Fertilizer.
   In England, he attempted to implement his theories commercially through a fertilizer created by treating phosphate of lime in bone meal with sulfuric acid. Although it was much less expensive than the guano that was used at the time, it failed because it was not able to be properly absorbed by crops.
  
  Section::::Key figures in Europe.:Sir John Bennet Lawes.
   Dynamite was first manufactured in the U.S. by the Giant Powder Company of San Francisco, California, whose founder had obtained the exclusive rights from Nobel in 1867. Giant was eventually acquired by DuPont, which produced dynamite under the Giant name until Giant was dissolved by Du Pont in 1905.
  
  Thereafter, DuPont produced dynamite under its own name until 1911-12 when its explosives monopoly was broken up by the U.S. Circuit Court in the "Powder Case". 
   Section::::Explosions.
  
  The ammonium nitrate, needed either as fertilizer or an explosive, was manufactured in Nebraska and Iowa and shipped to Texas City by rail before being loaded on the "Grandcamp". It was manufactured in a patented process, mixed with clay, petrolatum, rosin and paraffin wax to avoid moisture caking. It was packaged in paper sacks, then transported and stored at higher temperatures that increased its chemical activity. Longshoremen reported the bags were warm to the touch before loading.
   John Bennet Lawes began the scientific investigation of fertilization at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in 1843. He investigated the impact of inorganic and organic fertilizers on crop yield and founded one of the first artificial fertilizer manufacturing factories in 1842. Fertilizer, in the shape of sodium nitrate deposits in Chile, was imported to Britain by John Thomas North as well as guano (birds droppings). The first commercial process for fertilizer production was the obtaining of phosphate from the dissolution of coprolites in sulphuric acid.
  
  Section::::Modern agriculture.:20th century.
   Section::::Key figures in Europe.:The Haber Process.
  
  In the early decades of the 20th century, the Nobel prize-winning chemists Carl Bosch of IG Farben and Fritz Haber developed the Haber process which utilized molecular nitrogen (N) and methane (CH) gas in an economically sustainable synthesis of ammonia (NH). The ammonia produced in the Haber process is the main raw material of the Ostwald process.
  
  Section::::Key figures in Europe.:The Ostwald process.
   The identification of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) as critical factors in plant growth led to the manufacture of synthetic fertilizers, further increasing crop yields. In 1909, the Haber-Bosch method to synthesize ammonium nitrate was first demonstrated. NPK fertilizers stimulated the first concerns about industrial agriculture, due to concerns that they came with serious side effects such as soil compaction, soil erosion, and declines in overall soil fertility, along with health concerns about toxic chemicals entering the food supply.
   The Frank–Caro process was the first commercial process that was used worldwide to fix atmospheric nitrogen. The product was used as fertilizer and commercially known as "Lime-Nitrogen". "Nitrolim" or "Kalkstickstoff" in German.
  
  The method was developed by the German chemists Adolph Frank and Nikodem Caro between 1895 and 1899. In its first decades, the world market for inorganic fertilizer was dominated by factories utilizing the cyanamide process.
  
  Section::::History.:Production facilities.
   Despite the invention of the blasting cap, the volatility of nitroglycerin rendered it useless as a commercial explosive. To solve this problem, Nobel sought to combine it with another substance that would make it safe for transport and handling but yet would not reduce its effectiveness as an explosive. He tried combinations of cement, coal, and sawdust, but was unsuccessful. Finally, he tried diatomaceous earth, fossilized algae, that he brought from the Elbe River near his factory in Hamburg, which successfully stabilized the nitroglycerin into a portable explosive. 
   Section::::History.:Canadian Explosives Ltd.
  
  Canadian Explosives, jointly owned by du Pont, in the USA, and Nobel's Explosives, in Scotland, were already producing Cordite, at Beloeil, for the Quebec Arsenal, before World War I. The capacity of this plant was increased one-hundredfold to 350,000 lbs (159,000 kg) of Cordite per month. In addition, in February 1918, they started to build a Cordite plant at Nobel to produce 1,500,000 lbs (681,000 kg) per month. It was finished on 24 August 1918.
  
  Section::::Highway 400 realignment.
   For several decades beginning in the 1940s, the largest producer of dynamite in the world was the Union of South Africa. There the De Beers company established a factory in 1902 at Somerset West. The explosives factory was later operated by AECI (African Explosives and Chemical Industries). The demand for the product came mainly from the country's vast gold mines, centered on the Witwatersrand. The factory at Somerset West was in operation in 1903 and by 1907 it was already producing 340,000 cases, each, annually. A rival factory at Modderfontein was producing another 200,000 cases per year.
   West Fertilizer Company had supplied chemicals to farmers since it was founded in 1962. it was owned by Adair Grain, Inc. and employed nine workers at the facility. Adair Grain, Inc. is wholly owned by Donald Adair and his wife Wanda.
   Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent inert substance like "kieselguhr" (diatomaceous earth) it became safer and more convenient to handle, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as dynamite. Nobel later on combined nitroglycerin with various nitrocellulose compounds, similar to collodion, but settled on a more efficient recipe combining another nitrate explosive, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which was a more powerful explosive than dynamite. Gelignite, or blasting gelatin, as it was named, was patented in 1876; and was followed by a host of similar combinations, modified by the addition of potassium nitrate and various other substances.
   Section::::Key figures in Europe.:Jean Baptiste Boussingault.
  
  In France, Jean Baptiste Boussingault (1802–1887) pointed out that the amount of nitrogen in various kinds of fertilizers is important.
  
  Metallurgists Percy Gilchrist (1851–1935) and Sidney Gilchrist Thomas (1850–1885) invented the Gilchrist-Thomas process, which enabled the use of high phosphorus acidic Continental ores for steelmaking. The dolomite lime lining of the converter turned in time into calcium phosphate, which could be used as fertilizer, known as Thomas-phosphate.
  
  Section::::Key figures in Europe.:The Birkeland-Eyde Process.
   In the years since the bombing, scientists, security experts, and the ATF have called on Congress to develop legislation that would require customers to produce identification when purchasing ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and for sellers to maintain records of its sale. Critics argue that farmers lawfully use large quantities of the fertilizer, and as of 2009, only Nevada and South Carolina require identification from purchasers. In June 1995, Congress enacted legislation requiring chemical taggants to be incorporated into dynamite and other explosives so that a bomb could be traced to its manufacturer. In 2008, Honeywell announced that it had developed a nitrogen-based fertilizer that would not detonate when mixed with fuel oil. The company got assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to develop the fertilizer (Sulf-N 26) for commercial use. It uses ammonium sulfate to make the fertilizer less explosive.
   Other European and North American fertilizer companies developed their market share, forcing the English pioneer companies to merge, becoming Fisons, Packard, and Prentice Ltd. in 1929. Together they produced 85,000 tons of superphosphate/year in 1934 from their new factory and deep-water docks in Ipswich. By World War II they had acquired about 40 companies, including Hadfields in 1935, and two years later the large Anglo-Continental Guano Works, founded in 1917.
   BULLET::::- At the BASF laboratories, chemists Fritz Haber and his assistant, Robert Le Rossignol, first demonstrated a nitrogen fixation process for synthesizing ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen, using osmium as the catalyst. Carl Bosch and Alwin Mittasch adapted the Haber Process to large scale production, making it possible to artificially produce nitrates for fertilizer.
  
  BULLET::::- Born: Stavros Niarchos, Greek shipping magnate, in Piraeus (d. 1996); and Earl Butz, controversial U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 1971–76; in Albion, Indiana (d. 2008)
  
  Section::::July 3, 1909 (Saturday).
   Nobel obtained patents for his inventions in England on 7 May 1867 and in Sweden on 19 October 1867. After its introduction, dynamite rapidly gained wide-scale use as a safe alternative to black powder and nitroglycerin. Nobel tightly controlled the patents, and unlicensed duplicating companies were quickly shut down. However, a few American businessmen got around the patent by using a slightly different formula.
  
  Nobel originally sold dynamite as "Nobel's Blasting Powder" but decided to change the name to dynamite, from the Ancient Greek word "dýnamis" (), meaning "power".
  
  Section::::Manufacture.
  
  Section::::Manufacture.:Composition.
   In 1910, DuPont published a brochure entitled "Farming with Dynamite". The pamphlet was instructional, outlining the benefits to using their dynamite products on stumps and various other obstacles that would be easier to remove with dynamite as opposed to other more conventional and inefficient means.
  
  DuPont also established two of the first industrial laboratories in the United States, where they began the work on cellulose chemistry, lacquers and other non-explosive products. DuPont Central Research was established at the DuPont Experimental Station, across the Brandywine Creek from the original powder mills.
  
  Section::::History.:Automotive investments: 1914.
   In 1847, Ascanio Sobrero invented nitroglycerine to treat angina pectoris and it turned out to be a much more powerful explosive than guncotton. It was very dangerous to use until Alfred Nobel found a way to incorporate it in a solid mixture called dynamite and developed a safe detonator. Even then, dynamite needed to be stored carefully or it could form crystals that detonated easily. Thus, the military still preferred guncotton.
  