Silica vs. Clay — What's the Difference?

A white or colorless crystalline compound, SiO2, which in the form of quartz and certain other minerals is a chief component of the earth's crust. Silica sand is used in making a wide variety of materials, such as glass and concrete.

Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals. Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay particles, but become hard, brittle and non–plastic upon drying or firing.

Silicon dioxide.

A stiff, sticky fine-grained earth that can be moulded when wet, and is dried and baked to make bricks, pottery, and ceramics

Any of the silica group of the silicate minerals.

A European moth with yellowish-brown wings.

Silicon dioxide, SiO . It constitutes ordinary quartz (also opal and tridymite), and is artifically prepared as a very fine, white, tasteless, inodorous powder.

A fine-grained, firm earthy material that is plastic when wet and hardens when heated, consisting primarily of hydrated silicates of aluminum and widely used in making bricks, tiles, and pottery.

A white or colorless vitreous insoluble solid (SiO2); various forms occur widely in the earth's crust as quartz or cristobalite or tridymite or lechartelierite

A hardening or nonhardening material having a consistency similar to clay and used for modeling.

(Geology) A sedimentary material with grains smaller than 0.002 millimeter in diameter.

Moist sticky earth; mud.

The human body as opposed to the spirit.

A mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina, that is ductile when moist; the material of pre-fired ceramics.

An earth material with ductile qualities.

(tennis) A tennis court surface made of crushed stone, brick, shale, or other unbound mineral aggregate.

(biblical) The material of the human body.

(geology) A particle less than 3.9 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.

A clay pipe for smoking tobacco.

A clay pigeon.

(informal) Land or territory of a country or other political region, especially when subject to territorial claims

(transitive) To add clay to, to spread clay onto.

To purify using clay.

A soft earth, which is plastic, or may be molded with the hands, consisting of hydrous silicate of aluminium. It is the result of the wearing down and decomposition, in part, of rocks containing aluminous minerals, as granite. Lime, magnesia, oxide of iron, and other ingredients, are often present as impurities.

Earth in general, as representing the elementary particles of the human body; hence, the human body as formed from such particles.

To cover or manure with clay.

To clarify by filtering through clay, as sugar.

A very fine-grained soil that is plastic when moist but hard when fired

Water soaked soil; soft wet earth

United States general who commanded United States forces in Europe from 1945 to 1949 and who oversaw the Berlin airlift (1897-1978)

United States politician responsible for the Missouri Compromise between free and slave states (1777-1852)

The dead body of a human being