Wiktionary
n. (context chemistry English) A hard glassy mineral, SiO₂, occurring as quartz, sand, opal etc. Informally known as silica.
WordNet
n. a white or colorless vitreous insoluble solid (SiO2); various forms occur widely in the earth's crust as quartz or cristobalite or tridymite or lechartelierite [syn: silica, silicon oxide]
Wikipedia
Silicon dioxide, also known as silica (from the Latin silex), is a chemical compound that is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula . It has been known since ancient times. Silica is most commonly found in nature as quartz, as well as in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one of the most complex and most abundant families of materials, existing both as several minerals and being produced synthetically. Notable examples include fused quartz, crystal, fumed silica, silica gel, and aerogels. Applications range from structural materials to microelectronics to components used in the food industry.
Usage examples of "silicon dioxide".
An alien who breathes in oxygen and excretes silicon dioxide is not impossible, but does deserve some explanation.
Furthermore, the silicon equivalent of carbon dioxide (silicon dioxide, the major component of ordinary glass) is, on all planetary surfaces, a solid, not a gas.
We're carbon, and our waste is carbon dioxide, and this thing is silicon and its waste is silicon dioxide-silica.
Apart from contamination with interstellar gas and dust, the surface was pure quartz, silicon dioxide.
When you put silicon with water, under the right conditions, it forms silicon dioxide—.
Typical wellstone is composed primarily of pure silicon, silicon dioxide, and gold.
The frayed grain indicates this has been separated, by some medium of which we know nothing, from a natural silicon dioxide strata deeper than man has ever penetrated.
The chronar floated in a cloudlet of silicon dioxide above the boiling Earth and languidly collected its data with automatically operating instruments.
Now this guy had the idea that, since the physicists can get energy out of uranium, could I work out a way in which we could use silicon dioxide -- sand, dirt -- as a fuel?
He took them to the great gate of Old Drallar, a monumental arch carved from water-pure silicon dioxide by native craftsmen, and so old it was not recorded in the palace chronicles.