the incendiary bombs used during the war, and how they could not be quenched by carbon dioxide or water, or even by sand. Indeed, if one heated magnesium with sand, silicon dioxide—and what could be more inert than sand?—the magnesium would burn brilliantly, pulling the oxygen out of the sand, producing elemental silicon or a mixture of silicon with magnesium silicide. (Nonetheless, sand was used to suffocate ordinary fires that had been started by incendiary bombs, even if it was useless against burning magnesium itself, and one saw sand buckets everywhere in London during the war; every
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