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Discovery: In Their Element: Silicon - The World's Building Block

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Lump of silicon on solar panels

28/08/2017 GMT

Silicon - The World's Building Block

In Their Element

BBC World Service - Discovery, In Their Element, Silicon - The World's Building BlockSearch BBC

The key component of rocks, sand and materials from glass and concrete to microelectronics

Silicon forms more than a quarter of the earth's crust by weight. With oxygen it makes sand and it is essential to electronics. Dr Louisa Preston explores why silicon is so useful

Silicon is literally everywhere in both the natural and built environment, from the dominance of silicate rocks in the earth crust, to ubiquitous sand in building materials and as the basis for glass. 

We've also harnessed silicon's properties as a semiconductor to build the modern electronics industry - without silicon personal computers and smartphones would simply not exist.

Silicon is also found widely across the universe. It is formed in stars, particularly when they explode. And the similarities between how silicon and carbon form chemical bonds has led many to wonder whether there could be silicon based life elsewhere - perhaps in some far flung part of the galaxy where carbon is not as abundant as here on earth. 

As well as discussing the potential for silicon based life on other planets, Birkbeck University astrobiologist Dr Louisa Preston considers the varied uses of silicon here on earth, from its dominance in our built environment to its driving role in artificial intelligence and its ability to harness the sun's energy.

Image: Lump of silicon on solar panels
Credit: wloven/Getty Images

Discovery: In Their Element

Professor Andrea Sella tells the stories of different elements.

Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, celebrates the art and science of chemical elements. In this episode he admires two more elements that create visual treats.
 
At the time of Emperor Napoleon the Third aluminium was more valuable than gold and silver. The Emperor liked the metal so much he had his cutlery made out of it. But once a cheaper way was discovered to extract aluminium it began to be used for all kinds of objects, from aeroplanes to coffee pots. Andrea talks to Professor Mark Miodownik at the Institute of Making at UCL about why aluminium is such a useful material, from keeping crisps crisp to the tinsel on our Christmas trees. Andrea visits the Science Museum where he admires an aluminium plane of the class flown by Amelia Earhart. And he talks about the lightness of bicycles made from aluminium with Keith Noronha, of Reynolds Technology.
 
Strontium is the 15th most common element in the earth yet we really only come into contact with it in fireworks. It gives us the deep red colour we admire in a pyrotechnics display. Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at UCL, meets Mike Sansom of Brighton Fireworks who explains how a firework is constructed and reveals the chemical mix that creates the bright red flashes.
Professor Thomas Klap�tke of the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich talks about his search for a substitute for strontium in fireworks and about how the element can get into our bones.
And Janet Montgomery, Professor of Archaeology at Durham University, explains how strontium traces have revealed that our Neolithic ancestors moved around much more than was previously thought. Nearly half the people buried around Stonehenge in Southern England were born in places with different rocks from those under Salisbury Plain.

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