Regarding the text string: "SiO⁴. Silica in crystalline form."

Amahr

Silica in crystalline form has four Oxygen atoms linked together with the Silicon atom so it should be SiO4 (small 4, lower bound of summation) and not SiO⁴.

“Crystalline SiO2
Silica (the chemical compound SiO2) has a number of distinct crystalline forms: quartz, tridymite, cistobalite, and others (including the high pressure polymorphs Stishovite and Coesite). Nearly all of them involve tetrahedral SiO4 units linked together by shared vertices in different arrangements…” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_of_liquids_and_glasses)

Correct me if I am wrong.

Kriegerstrain

You're almost right. It should be SiO2, not SiO4 - the latter is physically impossible[1]. The SiO4 wikipedia mentions describes the shape around the silicon centre, not the chemical stoichiometry. For example, in rock salt, each sodium ion has six chloride ions around it to have an octahedral geometry, but the formula is still NaCl.

[1] Well, ish. You could in theory have silicon (II) superoxide or silicon (IV) peroxide with formulaa SiO4 but they'd be so unstable that they would explode and form oxygen (O2) and silica (SiO2) immediately, probably taking you and your lab along with themselves.

BeckysFootSlave

And I thought I am stupid translating it first SiO2 into the German translation, then took si04!
Damn now I translate it again!

Thanks!