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LITHOEN

Chemical element

Silicon

The element that, with oxygen, defines the silicate minerals. Its tetrahedral coordination by four oxygens is the single structural motif from which most of the solid Earth is assembled.

A stacked diagram with chemical element at the base, mineral species above it, mineral group to the side, and rock at the top, with a separate boxed note that ore, commodity and resource are not implied by any of them.
SchematicFour different kinds of thing that ordinary usage runs together. An element is defined by atomic number; a mineral species by structure and composition, and accepted by name; a mineral group gathers species and is not itself a species; a rock is an aggregate of minerals. None of these levels implies an ore, a commodity or a resource.
Full description of this figure

Reading upward: chemical elements, defined by atomic number, with silicon, oxygen, magnesium and iron as examples. Above them, mineral species — naturally occurring, ordered in structure, with a characteristic composition, and accepted under that name by the International Mineralogical Association — with forsterite as an example. Beside them, mineral groups and series, which gather species and are explicitly not species themselves, with olivine as an example. Above, rocks, which are aggregates of one or more minerals, with peridotite as an example. Set apart in a bordered box: ore, commodity and resource, none of which follows from any level below.

Original Lithoen diagram · LITHOEN-ORIGINAL

Classification

atomic number
14
symbol
Si
block
p

How this record is known

3
Settled consensus
Cited as the accepted position of the discipline.

3 of 3 claims on this page cite at least one registered source. Counts describe how each statement is known, not how likely it is to be true.

What Lithoen records

Each claim states how it is known and cites its evidence.

Established14 protons

Silicon has atomic number 14: its nucleus contains 14 protons, and that is what makes it silicon.

  • definition basis: Atomic number is definitional: an atom with a different proton count is a different element, whatever else it shares.

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence one source

Evidence: Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights (IUPAC) 2024 Primary authority

Established28.084–28.086 u

The standard atomic weight of silicon is given as the interval [28.084, 28.086], because its isotopic composition varies measurably between normal materials.

  • definition basis: CIAAW Standard Atomic Weights 2024. An interval is not an uncertainty: it is the range the value genuinely takes across normal materials.
  • precision note: A standard atomic weight is a property of the element as found in normal materials, not the mass of any individual atom.

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence one source

Evidence: Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights (IUPAC) 2024 Primary authority

In the knowledge graph

Record last updated 2026-09-06. Corrections follow the published corrections policy; superseded claims are retained, never silently edited.