Horace Heffner wrote:
> One of the products > of tetrasilane combustion, SiO2, is a solid and is valuable for many > things, including the making of solar cells. If I'm not mistaken, its common name is quartz, AKA "glass" (but without the impurities). Presumably the stuff comes out of the combustion process as individual molecules, not bound to anything -- i.e., as a gas. Thinking about this as a possible combustion product from zillions of futuristic cars, one wonders, is it safe to breath vaporized glass? As I seem to recall, the liquified version -- sodium silicate, aka water glass -- is considered bad stuff to drink. I've never heard anything about breathing glass gas, though, as it's not something one commonly encounters, the vapor pressure of silica being very low at ordinary temperatures.
