My kids are making a thermonuclear device as a school project. Got the plans off the internet.
TrebleRebel,
Let me try to teach your kids why there was a spike for silica on the EDX — why the elemental analysis was confused and showed silica.
Have your kids try this experiment. Boil an egg. Now boil it after pricking it with a pin so that the vapor can escape. Sodium silicate was used as an egg preservation agent in the early 20th Century with large success. When fresh eggs are immersed in it, bacteria which cause the eggs to spoil are kept out and water is kept in. Eggs can be kept fresh using this method for up to nine months. When boiling eggs preserved this way, it is well advised to pin-prick the egg to allow steam to escape because the shell is no longer porous.
An article in The Mother Earth News offers actual test results for this and other methods of preservation.
This is the method that was used.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0781100.html
And bingo was his name-o.