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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Diatomaceous earth

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Original - Diatomaceous earth, also known as diatomite or kieselgur, as viewed under bright field illumination on a light microscope. Diatomaceous earth is a soft, siliceous, sedimentary rock made up of the cell walls/shells of single cell diatoms and readily crumbles to a fine powder. Diatom cell walls are bivalve, i.e. made up of two halves, and are made up of biogenic silica; silica synthesised in the diatom cell by the polymerisation of silicic acid. This sample consists of a mixture of centric (radially symmetric) and pennate (bilaterally symmetric) diatoms. The primary uses of diatomaceous earth are for cleaning (scouring), filtration, heat-resistive insulation and as an inert absorbent substrate. One of the most famous uses was by Alfred Nobel who developed dynamite; a mixture of diatomaceous earth and nitroglycerin. This image of diatomaceous earth particles in water is at a scale of 6.236 pixels/μm, the entire image covers a region of approximately 1.13 by 0.69 mm.
Reason
This is a high quality image of an interesting, and surprisingly widely used, sedimentary rock.
Articles in which this image appears
Dynamite, Silicate, Diatom, Micropaleontology, Diatomaceous earth, Biogenic silica
FP category for this image
Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Geology
Creator
Richard Wheeler (Zephyris)

Promoted File:Diatomaceous Earth BrightField.jpg --Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 21:46, 8 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]