I read a book about the 2 japanese guys who started up Sony. These guys were one of the first people to develop transistors.
I will summarise it for you to save you the trouble of reading up on it.
Silicon is a crystal, just like a crystal wine glass, if you tap it, it will resonate, or ring. Everything has a resonant frequency, depending on it's size and shape and construction material.
Now...
Think how a pearl is made (either naturally or artificially). They introduce a contaminant, usually a single grain, and then allow the crystal (pearl) to grow on the contaminant particle. In the case of the pearl, the animal wraps it in layers as part of it's body's immune system. The result is a pearl, but at the centre is a single grain of sand or dirt.
Based on this principle, they created silicon wafers. Inside a transistor, is 3 small discs, the first transistors were made like pearls where a grain of contaminant is used to grow a flat disc of silicone.
2 of the discs are on the bottom, side by side, and the third is placed on top of it in a triangle shape. When 2 of them get power, the third one resonates at a higher rate. Hence, you get the amplifying effect of a transistor, ie. A transistor radio's amplifier.
To protect the whole lot, they encase the silicone wafers in the hard black plastic so that they cannot be broken or disturbed. This is Solid State electronics, ie. almost impervious to tampering or environmental conditions.
The first silicon chips were made in a similar fashion. Think of a silicon chip as a whole heap of transistors made into one small space.
Under a microscope, a simple silicone chip looks like a city block, with lots of buildings rising up from the ground. A modern pentium chip would be the equivalent of Mexico City or New York by comparison.
A good example of this is the SID chip (Sound synthesizer) used in the Commodore 64 computer. In the early 1980's, the best way to make the SID chip was to grow silicone wafer crystals on a board. It was almost an organic process, similar to growing mushrooms.
At the time they would have had many failures, so quality control was vital. However, there are vast differences in the functionality of the SID chip. On one commodore 64, you can feed in the same program and it will produce a slightly different sound to another commodore 64. All will work similarly, but because it was a synthesizer chip, small organic differences would produce different results. This was acceptable back then..
Anyway, this relates to this thread because silicone is an amplifier. One piece of silicone can cause a cascade of vibrating silicon particles.
You need to find a silicon particle (size and shape) of the right frequency to cause water to vibrate. Then you will get some amplifying effects......
