As precious as jewels....... silicon!	Si Automic #14 By Avery Masters Mill Valley Middle School	Take Me to; Uses History Properties Facts Glossary Bibliography
The Properties of Silicon Silicon's atomic number is 14 on the periodic table. It is a good isulator, and is a poor conductor of heat. Silicon has a density of 2.4, and that is high for most metals, so it is usually pretty unreactive, and its boiling and meltig points are pretty high.. When it does combine, it it usually found in a compound with oxygen, in sand. Silicon is usually combined in nature, and we use only the pure silicon for our electronics.	Facts about Silicon Silicon was thought to be a compound when it was first discovered. Silicon is almost always chemically fused in nature. Quartz is mostly made from silicon. The boiling point of silicon is 355 K. Silicon's melting point is 1683.2 K!	History/Discovery Silicon has a history that goes all the way back to the early 1800. In that time there was a man called James Graffer, who was an Eglish chemist. He thought that what he called "silica" was a copmound. Silicon was not revsited untile 1823, when a Swedish chemist named J"ns Berelius did lab expirements that proved "silica" to be an element, and it was renamed silicon and put in its place on the periodic table.
Uses There are many uses of silicon in our daily lives. For exaple, silicon is a major part of mirochips in the computer you are using right now! Silicon is also found a lot in glass, tools, and cement. Some of the uses of silicon are out of this world! There is a lot of silicon inthe sun and stars, and a type of meterite called aerolites are made completely of silicon! Pretty cool, right?Another thing that silicon is used in is jewls. Did you know that emeralds are made completly from silicon? I didn't think so. And it doesn't stop there. Silicon is in opals, quartz, flit, agate, jasper, mica and granite as well.
Glossary Crystal; A homogenous solid formed by a repeating, three-dimensional pattern of atoms, ions, or molecules and having fixed distances between co Valence elecrons; The electrons in the outermost shell of an atom. Aerilites- A type of meteorite made entirly from silicon. Inulator- Something that does not conduct electrical energy. Most nonmetals are insulators. Conductor- something that conducts electrical curent well. Usually metals and some metaloids are conductors. Doping;The addition of metal to atoms to a region of silicon to make it semiconducting.Molecule; a group of two or more atoms held together by chemical bonds.
Bibliography http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/Si.html http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Si/key.html  http://www.tamuk.edu/chemistry/WebElements/silicon_element.htm http://nautilus.fis.uc.pt/st2.5/scenes-e/elem/e01491.html http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Si/key.html title found at; http:// www.flamingtext.com images found at; http://pearl1.lanl.gov/periodic/elements/14.html imges found at; www.bestcrystals.com/ manmade.html http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/ Comp[uter animation found at;http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=www.cliffsnotes.com/images/computer-image.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.cliffsnotes.com/computer/&h=161&w=205&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcomputer%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den