Small grains of silicon because it has been crushed. This is not the silicon used in computers.A thin cut of a large crystal of silicon that is very smooth. This is the type of silicon can be used in computers because it is very pure.
Silicon looks like a metal, but cannot do everything that a metal can, like conduct electricity well. Silicon is used a lot in today's computers and nearly every other electronic device as well. Germanium can also be used in computers, but silicon is much easier to find.
For example, all of the sand found at the beach is made of small cubes of silicon dioxide also known as silica. Glass is made by heating sand hot enough until it melts.[11] Glass made from silicon can be made in different colours by adding colouring compounds. Many rocks and minerals are composed of compounds of silicon and oxygen called silicates.
Silicon is a semiconductor, and much used in computers. A super-pure isotope of silicon, silicon-28, can now be made 40 times more pure than before. It is very important for the next big development in computers. This stores "qubits" in atoms of another element, like phosphorous, embedded in a tiny layer of ultra-pure silicon-28. These qubits can simultaneously encode a one and a zero, for incredibly fast and complex calculations.[12]
↑Weeks, Mary Elvira (1932). "The discovery of the elements: XII. Other elements isolated with the aid of potassium and sodium: beryllium, boron, silicon, and aluminum". Journal of Chemical Education. 9 (8): 1386–1412. Bibcode:1932JChEd...9.1386W. doi:10.1021/ed009p1386.
↑Voronkov, M. G. (2007). "Silicon era". Russian Journal of Applied Chemistry. 80 (12): 2190. doi:10.1134/S1070427207120397.
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