{"id":28344,"date":"2024-11-30T04:00:35","date_gmt":"2024-11-29T22:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=28344"},"modified":"2025-04-08T18:35:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T13:05:13","slug":"silica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/silica\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Silica?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Silica:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Silica is another name for the <strong>chemical compound<\/strong> composed of <strong>two most abundant elements in Earth\u2019s crust, silicon and oxygen, SiO2.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The <strong>mass of Earth\u2019s crust is 59 percent silica<\/strong>, the main constituent of more than 95 percent of the known rocks.<\/li>\n<li>Silica exists in many different<strong> forms<\/strong> that can <strong>be crystalline as well as non-crystalline (amorphous).<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Silica has <strong>three main crystalline varieties<\/strong>: <strong>quartz<\/strong> (by far the <strong>most abundant<\/strong>), <strong>tridymite<\/strong>, and <strong>cristobalite<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Other varieties include coesite, keatite, and lechatelierite.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><strong>Uses<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>Silica sand is used in buildings and roads in the <strong>form of port land cement, concrete,<\/strong> and <strong>mortar<\/strong>, as well as <strong>sandstone<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Silica is also used in grinding and <strong>polishing glass and stone<\/strong>; in foundry molds; in the <strong>manufacture of glass, ceramics,<\/strong> silicon carbide, ferrosilicon, and silicones; <strong>as a refractory material;<\/strong> and as <strong>gemstones<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Silica gel<\/strong> is often <strong>used as a desiccant to remove moisture<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1<\/strong>: What is tridymite?<\/h3>\n<p>Tridymite is a low pressure, mostly high-temperature-stable polymorph of silica that can also form or persist metastably at low temperatures.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>News<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/uttar-pradesh\/silica-mining-ngt-asks-cpcb-to-prepare-pan-india-guidelines\/article68928948.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Silica mining: NGT asks CPCB to prepare pan-India guidelines<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Silica is another name for the chemical compound composed of two most abundant elements in Earth\u2019s crust, silicon and oxygen, SiO2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":28345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-28344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}