Many new forms of refractories have come into use to meet the demands of the new high temperature work.  The essentials are that it should not melt or crumble at high heat and should not expand and contract greatly under changes of temperature (low coefficient of thermal expansion).  Whether it is desirable that it should heat through readily or slowly (coefficient of thermal conductivity) depends on whether it is wanted as a crucible or as a furnace lining.  Lime (calcium oxide) fuses only at the highest heat of the electric furnace, but it breaks down into dust.  Magnesia (magnesium oxide) is better and is most extensively employed.  For every ton of steel produced five pounds of magnesite is needed.  Formerly we imported 90 per cent. of our supply from Austria, but now we get it from California and Washington.  In 1913 the American production of magnesite was only 9600 tons.  In 1918 it was 225,000.  Zirconia (zirconium oxide) is still more refractory and in spite of its greater cost zirkite is coming into use as a lining for electric furnaces.

Silicon is next to oxygen the commonest element in the world.  It forms a quarter of the earth’s crust, yet it is unfamiliar to most of us.  That is because it is always found combined with oxygen in the form of silica as quartz crystal or sand.  This used to be considered too refractory to be blown but is found to be easily manipulable at the high temperatures now at the command of the glass-blower.  So the chemist rejoices in flasks that he can heat red hot in the Bunsen burner and then plunge into ice water without breaking, and the cook can bake and serve in a dish of “pyrex,” which is 80 per cent. silica.

At the beginning of the twentieth century minute specimens of silicon were sold as laboratory curiosities at the price of $100 an ounce.  Two years later it was turned out by the barrelful at Niagara as an accidental by-product and could not find a market at ten cents a pound.  Silicon from the electric furnace appears in the form of hard, glittering metallic crystals.

An alloy of iron and silicon, ferro-silicon, made by heating a mixture of iron ore, sand and coke in the electrical furnace, is used as a deoxidizing agent in the manufacture of steel.

Since silicon has been robbed with difficulty of its oxygen it takes it on again with great avidity.  This has been made use of in the making of hydrogen.  A mixture of silicon (or of the ferro-silicon alloy containing 90 per cent. of silicon) with soda and slaked lime is inert, compact and can be transported to any point where hydrogen is needed, say at a battle front.  Then the “hydrogenite,” as the mixture is named, is ignited by a hot iron ball and goes off like thermit with the production of great heat and the evolution of a vast volume of hydrogen gas.  Or the ferro-silicon may be simply burned in an atmosphere of steam in a closed tank after ignition with a pinch of gunpowder.  The iron and the silicon revert to their oxides while the hydrogen of the water is set free.  The French “silikol” method consists in treating silicon with a 40 per cent. solution of soda.