Chapter 2 Questions

1.Carbon and Silicon are quite abundant. Carbon can be found in carbon dioxide and other gases and molecules. Silicon can be found as silicon dioxide, exerted through volcanoes.

2. Carbon is such an appropriate element as the foundation for life. Silicon is used for silicon dioxide beating out the element carbon.

3. Building life form from silicon is much more challenging than carbon because silicon can possibly be fatal such as in the case of Silicon Dioxide.  Silicon doesn't dissolve in water, making it harder to expel from our bodies.

4. William Shockley was working on small silicon amplifiers for computers. After failing so many times, he decided to give his beginning work to John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. Both of them worked collaboratively to find out that silicon was much too brittle to work as an amp and moved one step down in the periodic table to germanium. They built the world's first solid amplifier which they named a transistor. Shockley, hearing the news that they accurately made what he was so much trying to do decided to do the most vulgar thing anyone can do, he took credit for it. He was seen taking pictures with Bardeen and Brattain, often making them look like assistants rather than inventors. They all, however, got a Nobel Peace Prize. The least deserving of the award was obviously Shockley because although he came up with the principle idea, he left the work incomplete and waited until Brattain and Bardeen did all the work. Frankly, Shockley merely just deserved a pat on the back.

5. I can't think of a situation where someone stole someone else's scientific discovery but I do think that women often times had their work stolen such as the case with Maria Goeppert-Mayer.

6.Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit, in order to get rid of the problem called the tyranny of numbers. The problem was that the silicon transistors would make the circuit break down.