This is a story about sand and how science and silicon changed our lives. Over the last century science taught us to take this common material and make the products on which we depend - computer chips, solar cells and optical fibres. This book relates the underlying scientific discoveries to the products made from sand.
This is a story about sand and how science and silicon changed our lives. Over the last century science taught us to take this common material and make the products on which we depend - computer chips, solar cells and optical fibers. This book relates the underlying scientific discoveries to the products made from sand.
Where would the world be without sand? Pure and impure, heated and x rayed, in tiny crystals and huge quantities, sand is not only underfoot, but - as McWhan shows in drawing on four decades of scientific research - the most important substance in modern science and life. We rely on it in everything from our watches, cigarette lighters, submarine detectors, and filters to the computer chips that are literally the basis of the electronics revolution. Like books such
as Coal, Cod and Salt, this book is an entertaining read in the genre of microhistory.
