Word: silica
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...young (31) researcher just starting in at Manhattan's Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, went to work on a sick Plymouth Rock hen. He took material from a tumor on the bird's breast, ground it ultrafine to smash the very cells, filtered the stuff through silica so that not even a broken cell could pass, and injected the liquid into healthy chickens. They soon developed cancers of the same type (sarcoma) as the original...
...that looks promising for even the fastest-falling missiles: sheathe the cone with Astrolite, a plastic made by H. I. Thompson Fiber Glass Co. of Los Angeles. Astrolite looks like the familiar brownish material used in workers' hard hats, but the fibers that reinforce the plastic are silica (quartz) instead of glass...
When Astrolite is exposed to a blast of high-temperature gas, a thin layer of the plastic on the surface burns off, leaving a mat of silica fibers arranged so that they cannot be easily blown away. At 3,000° F. (about the melting point of iron), they begin to soften, but melted silica is sticky, viscous stuff that clings tight until it turns to vapor. The vaporizing process draws heat from the remaining Astrolite and tends to keep it cool...
...mixture of lime, silica, alumina and iron oxide, first made in 1824 by an English mason, Joseph Aspdin. The greyish color of the compound, cooked in a kiln, reminded him of stone quarried from the Isle of Portland off the British coast...
...Centralia, Wash., reporters seized upon a theory propounded by Building Materials Dealer Jack Scherer: windshield glass is made from silica sand, which abounds on the Pacific shores of the State of Washington. Silica sand is full of sand-flea eggs. So, when the windshields get warm enough, the eggs hatch and the fleas have to chip the glass to get out. When he learned that his facetiously offered explanation had been wired across the country, the astonished Scherer granted that it was no more ridiculous than some others that had been publicized...