Silicon

The Greatness of Silicon

In 1824, what is now known as silicon which is from the Latin word “silex” was discovered by a Swedish chemist named Jacob Berzelius. By heating up chips of potassium in a silica container and then carefully washing away the residual by-products is how he discovered this element. Silicon is a metalloid with a silver complexion color. It is in the solid state and has an atomic weight 28.0855. One of the major ingredients in sand is silicon which is readily available all over the earth.

 Silicon is one of the most used elements on the periodic table. They are used in many different things around the world in many different places. Silicon is used in things such as lasers, electronic devices, and is an ingredient of steel. They are also used to produce transistors, solar cells, rectifiers, and other important solid-state electronic devices. Semi metallic is the classification of silicon and is found in many different things such as the sun, stars, and natural gases. The earth’s crust is made up of 25% of silicon making it the second most abundant element after oxygen.  

Silicon is the most important element in the world! It is the true life element. Forget all about oxygen. If we never found silicon, then all other discoveries we have made would not have been. Today technology would not be where it is at without this special element.  This project would have been impossible to do because wouldn’t be able to find all of the research we needed without computers. In order to have computers you need silicon in it with all of the electronic devices, chips, and hard drive. It’s an important element that all people use and need around the world to do things that we weren’t able to do before.

      http://web1.caryacademy.org/facultywebs/gray_rushin/StudentProjects/ElementWebSites/silicon/WhereFound.htm

http://www.carondelet.pvt.k12.ca.us/Family/Science/GroupIVA/silicon.htm www.chemicool.com/elements/silicon.htmlCached - Similar