When I was a kid, on the first day of March each year, my mom would leap into my bedroom at the crack of dawn and shout “White Rabbits” at the top of her voice. One day I’ll have to ask her why she did this.
In the US we have March Madness, which is when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments are held. In this context, “madness” is used to convey the frenzied and chaotic activity associated with these events.
Since I hail from England, the idiomatic phrase “Mad as a March hare,” springs to mind. Although this saying has been in use since the 1500s, it was popularized by the March Hare character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Why am I waffling on about this here? I’m glad you asked. Much like the White Queen, I’m learning to believe “six impossible things before breakfast.” Things that I thought were set in stone (well, silicon) turn out to be stranger than I ever dreamt. For example…
The silicon used to make integrated circuits requires an ultra- high purity of 99.999999999% (the so-called “eleven nines”).
I thought this was pretty good. I was wrong. Silicon has three stable isotopes: 28Si (92.23%), 29Si (4.67%), and 30Si (3.10%). It turns out that, if we somehow remove the 29Si, our chips will go orders of magnitude faster. This could be a game changer.
How can we extract the 29Si? I know a man. I will report more in the future. The main thing to note is that, as always, the team at DENA has you covered!