It started with Pumice

Memories of using Lava soap as a child to get the embedded grease and grime off of my hands reminded me of Lava’s abrasive ingredient, pumice. Pumice is a very porous igneous rock (volcanic in origin.) It has some unusual properties in that it can float on water and at the same time takes your skin off. It is nothing more than lava that has cooled quickly above ground. Once cooled, it is nothing more than a kind of glass. And glass is a mixture of various contaminants and silicon.

I started off in another direction at that point. Since glass is a part of our every day lives, how plentiful is silicon? It makes up 15% of the Earth’s mass, coming in 3rd place behind iron and oxygen. That would make it very common indeed. So common we are naming valleys after it. So common we make chips (not edible) from it. And so useful, we use it to clean up after ourselves after we change the oil.

Icool

Cobb