Element #14 is Silicon.
Once upon a time, the floor of the Santa Clara Valley was
carpeted with orchards—cherries, plums, apricots—from Saratoga to
Milpitas, Mountain View to Gilroy. Then, Man learned how to build
electrical circuits out of silicon, and the Valley of Heart’s
Delight became Silicon Valley.
While the notion of our valley filled with fruit trees has a
certain pastoral charm, I think it’s safe to say that if the
microcircuit hadn’t come along, very few of us would be living here
now (and our GPSr's would be sextants!)
As an element, Silicon has some funny properties. Not quite a
metal, but not really a non-metal, it is typically classified as a
metalloid, which basically means it is metal-ish, but not totally.
Silicon is electrically conductive, but not as conductive as a
metal, unless the element is mixed—“doped”—with another element
with slightly different electronic properties. Adding atoms of an
element with one more (n-type) or one fewer (p-type) electron than
silicon greatly increases the electrical conductivity of silicon
and makes all sorts of semiconductor devices possible.
Silicon is the most abundant element in the Earth’s crust after
oxygen, which makes it rather surprising that it wasn’t
“discovered” until 1824 (by J.J. Berzelius in Sweden). Didn’t
anyone wonder what all that sand was made out of? Besides
electronics, silicon is used to make things as diverse as glass,
cement, silicon carbide cutting tools, ceramics, and, um, certain
bodily "enhancements". So it’s pretty useful stuff.
Science fiction is filled with musings about silicon-based life
(instead of the normal carbon-based life we all know and love).
These ideas arise from the fact that silicon is directly below
carbon on the Periodic Table and shares some—but not all—of
carbon’s properties. One famous example of silicon-based life was
the Horta on the original Star Trek series (NO KILL I!)
The company whose building is directly behind the cache was
pivotal in the development of Silicon Valley and remains the major
microprocessor manufacturer today. Their name is a contraction of
“Integrated Electronics”. Their first microprocessor, the 4004,
debuted in 1971, and contained 2300 transistors. It is now a
collector’s item. One of their latest microprocessors, the
dual-core Itanium 2 processor contains 1.7 billion transistors.
I had much difficulty finding a suitable hiding spot for Element
#14, as I really wanted it to be near this company's headquarters.
The cache is camo'ed, using a technique that I've encountered a few
times and which never fails to impress me with how invisible
it makes a cache.The container is properly identified with a GC.com
label, but please replace the cache so that the label isn't so
obvious that the camo is compromised.
GREAT STEALTH IS REQUIRED FOR THIS CACHE! In fact, I would go so
far to recommend that it NOT be searched for during business hours
or when there are people waiting nearby. If it looks like this will
be a major issue, I'll look for different hide spots.
There is no street parking right near the cache, but there is
some on some side streets. I've parked at off-hours in the office
building lot across the street, but since it's posted, I probably
shouldn't recommend anyone park there.