On Easter Sunday in 1960 , David Latimer , an electrical applied scientist from Surrey , England , wash out a 10 - gallon ( 38 - liter ) shabu carboy , or jar , that at one time had hold sulphuric acid . As he told the Daily Mail , he filled it with compost , draw close a single dayflower seedling at the bottom with a little water and corked it . Latimer then stuck it under a stairwell in his theatre where it catch mass of indirectsunlightand turned it around every so often so the foliage grew evenly .
For over 60 old age , Latimer ’s closed terrarium experimentation has thrived with almost no interference . It is a completely ego - sustainingecosystem . Only once has the carboy been opened — in 1972 he uncork it to toss in a small water . In this way , the terrarium service as an extremist - simplified modeling of how life on our major planet sustains itself — it ’s self - sufficient , as long as it get all the sunshine it postulate .
A unopen terrarium like Latimer ’s works because it replicates three basic hertz we see on Earth : the water cycle , the atomic number 8 cycle and the nutrient oscillation .
For starters , the terrarium has its own water round : since no water system can hightail it , the same water molecule keep knocking around in that bottle , getting wet-nurse up by the flora ’s root word and then transpired out of its leaves , condensing on the side of the container and running back down the sides and into the soil .
The plant is keep animated much the way all plants in ecosystem the world over make it work . Aerobic bacterium from the compost eat the all in plant subject , make more nutritive soil for the plant to use . The bacteria also use up the oxygen loose from plant and transform it into carbon dioxide , which is necessary for the plants to photosynthesize .
Latimer did n’t plan to chuck together what would become the sometime terrarium in the world . In fact , he did n’t even note it to anybody until he train photos into aBBC gardener ’s inquiry showto ask whether his experiment would be of any interestingness to the professionals . Latimerplansto either fleet the terrarium on to his nestling or allow for it to the Royal Horticultural Society .
