Ed Conway Profile picture
Aug 5 11 tweets 5 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
⌛️THE WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT SAND⌛️
This is the story of how we are all - all of us, human civilisation as we know it - TOTALLY dependent on a small town in rural America to keep the modern world turning.
It's the wild story of the world's purest, and most prized, sand
🧵
There are LOADS of different types of sands. Sands used for construction, for glassmaking, for foundries, for purifying water etc etc.
But the type of sand we're interested is incredibly rare. It's called high purity quartz.
It's very unusual indeed Image
Here's what it looks like.
An incredibly white, fine sand which is 99.999% silica.
This is far, far purer than the sand you use to make glass.
It's the purest sand in the world.
And there's only one place in the world which mines it in significant quantity: Spruce Pine, NC Image
btw if you're looking at that sand👆wondering whether you've seen it before... you probably have!
Spruce Pine sand is what goes in the iconic sand traps at the Augusta National golf course where they play the Masters.
But that's just the start of it... https://t.co/APvj7syU9ngolfmonthly.com/tour/us-master…
Image
Anyway, due to a geological freak, this small town in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina is the only place in the world where this super-pure sand is mined at scale.
It is ALL mined by TWO companies - but most is controlled by a company called Sibelco
Image
Image
Sibelco are super publicity shy.
They NEVER do interviews. NEVER let anyone on site. There are stories about how they supposedly blindfold outside contractors coming to work on machinery at Spruce Pine. Why the secrecy?
Because this stuff is VERY important sibelco.com/materials/high…
You see, the key use for high purity quartz is to make crucibles used in the Czochralski process, which turns super-pure silicon into the quite literally PERFECT silicon from which we make silicon chips 👇
All the silicon in your device is made this way
When it comes to these crucibles in which the silicon in your computer chip is made, no other sand will do. It MUST be high purity quartz. Anything less pure will introduce impurities which would mean your computer chip wouldn't work.
Only Spruce Pine sand can be used Image
We all know these days how much semiconductors matter.
Without them we're back in the dark ages.
But you can't make silicon chips without silicon and you can't make that super pure silicon without these crucibles 👆and you can't make these crucibles without this very special sand
Image
Image
Perhaps you're starting to see the significance of this.
The chips in EVERY single computer & smartphone in the world only exist thanks to the sand from a SINGLE place. Spruce Pine.
It might be the single most important place on the planet.
And most people have never heard of it Image
In part this is because we rarely stop & ask: hang on, where does the stuff we rely on every day actually COME from?
It's a question I've tried to answer in my book #materialworld. This thread is one tiny fragment of hundreds of stories in there. lnk.to/MaterialWorld

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More from @EdConwaySky

Jul 30
Can we PLEASE stop claiming that the UK's economy will soon be overtaken by Poland?
Or that this is a sign of how Britain is doing uniquely badly at the moment?
Not only is it quite offensive to Poland, it's also quite a meaningless statistic...
I think this all began with a @Keir_Starmer speech a few months ago. His point was that if UK & Polish GDP continued growing as they have done in recent years, Britain's would be overtaken by Poland's by 2030. It's kind of right but also kind of wrong news.sky.com/story/britains…
Here's why👇
Essentially Poland's growth was SO fast over the past decade or so (as you'd expect given it's a rapidly-growing frontier market) that if you extrapolate that forward in the coming decade its GDP per capita would overtake MOST OF THE G7.
https://t.co/FhsqKwBNFCnews.sky.com/story/amp/fina…
Image
Read 8 tweets
Jul 20
Here’s the story of an extraordinary journey, poss the most amazing journey in the world.
Through time, physics & around the globe, to produce the very thing you’re reading this on.
This story begins with a very simple question:
where does a silicon chip actually COME from?
🧵
That was one of the questions I set out to answer in #materialworld.
Not just how we make semiconductors - the also-extraordinary process of imprinting and etching billions of transistors onto a slice of silicon.
Amazing as that story is, it's been told many times before. Image
There's a v condensed version of that story in this thread👇. & FAR more in @crmiller1’s Chip War.
But this still didn’t answer my question.
I didn’t just want to know about what we do with silicon at fabs. I wanted to know WHERE THE SILICON COMES FROM
Read 26 tweets
Jul 11
🔎THE GLASS FAMINE🔎
I think you’ll find this story from #materialworld pretty 🤯
It’s about how a simple substance changed the world.
About how decisions taken centuries ago still shape our lives.
It begins with one of the most extraordinary moments in modern military history
🧵
The year is 1915.
War is raging on the Western Front.
Thousands are dying every day.
It’s already shaping up to be the bloodiest war in history. Guns, bombs, even chemical weapons like chlorine and mustard gas.
Amid the fighting, a spy is despatched from London to Switzerland
He has been sent from the Ministry of Munitions in Westminster on a v special mission. He is there to procure one of the world’s most advanced pieces of military technology.
That technology is…
glass.
Or, to be more precise, optical glass.
🕵️‍♂️Binoculars, telescopes, sniperscopes
Read 30 tweets
Jul 9
🚗THREAD🚗
There's a BIG problem with the UK's post 2030 ban on the sale of petrol cars.
But it's probably not the one you think it is...

- Recap: govt policy is that
From 2030 you won't be able to buy a new petrol car
From 2035 that applies to hybrids gov.uk/government/new…
There's a logic to this scheme.
On average cars have a lifetime of 15 years. UK has committed to getting carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. So the ban means those internal combustion engine (ICE) and hybrid cars will be disappearing by then.
EU has a 2035 deadline
But you'll probably have seen lots of objections from many quarters.
Let's start with one you see quite a lot these days: that electric cars (EVs) are actually DIRTIER than petrol cars - or at least are not much cleaner when you account for their manufacture.
Read 23 tweets
Jul 8
🎾THREAD🎾
Have you ever wondered how they keep the courts at Wimbledon so pristine?
Much of it is the hard work of the groundspeople.
But there’s another secret ingredient too.
A mysterious crystal we dig out of the ground.
There’s literally ONE place in the world you can get it
This is polyhalite.
It’s a type of salt (actually the name means “many salts”) composed of potassium, sulphur, magnesium & calcium.
Turns out it’s a brilliant fertiliser.
Used alongside traditional fertilisers it’s brilliant for grass, helping it grow faster and stay healthier
Just grind the rock into granules and sprinkle it on the ground.
Not only does polyhalite help grass (or potatoes or other crops) grow faster, it also helps plants absorb traditional nitrogen/potassium/phosphates fertilisers better.
Fewer chemicals -> healthier soil & less waste!
Read 20 tweets
Jul 7
You prob vaguely appreciate that your smartphone is pretty amazing.
📲But did you know HOW amazing?
🔬Did you know that what you’re holding is a physical manifestation of nanotechnology?
🪐That just beneath yr fingertips is one of the most perfect substances in the universe?
🤯
🧠 Start with the logic chip inside.
Chances are it was made with a 5nm process, mostly likely in a TSMC fab.
So, billions of transistors, each about a thousand times smaller than a red blood cell.🩸
Smaller than a coronavirus.🦠
Actually, you could fit 4 INSIDE a coronavirus.
👀These transistors are so small it’s tempting to call them microscopic.
But they’re smaller than that.
- So small they’re actually smaller than the wavelength of visible light.
🔬So they’re totally indiscernible to the naked eye through the most powerful optical microscope.
Read 17 tweets

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