BRAIN DUMP
Why are microchips made of silicon?
David Hoffman
■ Silicon works well for microchips as it makes good switches, because it is a semiconductor. It’s not electrically conductive like copper, which we use to make wires that carry electricity. It’s not a non-conductive insulator, like rubber. Insulators don’t carry electricity, so we use them to protect wires. Silicon is between these two, meaning we can use it to make switches called transistors. Silicon transistors turn from being an insulator to being conductive when we apply a little electricity. Microchips contain billions of silicon transistors. We use their switching to do mathematical and logical processes that power our electronic devices. AE
What was there before the Solar System formed?
Jamil Khalid
■ The Solar System formed out of an interstellar molecular cloud – a huge volume of tenuous gas and dust – which collapsed down under gravity to form the
