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Quiz of the week, 2026-10-04

The week we looked at what a chip factory drinks

Ten questions from this week in chips and the factory floor. One is a match-up. Every answer is a fact from a piece on this site or a public source, and every explanation says where it came from.

10 questions1 match-upsAbout 4 minutesEvery answer sourced

0 of 10 answered

Question 1 The numberPurity of ultrapure water is measured as electrical resistance. What is the practical ceiling at 25 degrees Celsius? 0.18 megohm-centimetres 18.2 megohm-centimetres 1.8 megohm-centimetres 182 megohm-centimetres

18.2 megohm-centimetres is the theoretical limit for pure water at 25 C. Dissolved ions are what let water carry a current, so once essentially the only ions left are the ones water makes from itself, resistance stops rising. Read the piece

Question 2 MES and the floorWhy does the rinse water between process steps have to be that empty? Pure water rinses faster It is a regulatory requirement for drinking water Anything dissolved in it is left behind when the water dries, and a residue is a defect It would freeze otherwise

The rinse removes the chemistry of the step that just finished. Whatever is dissolved in the water stays on the surface when it dries, and on a surface patterned at a few nanometres a dried grain of salt is a defect rather than a smudge. Read the piece

Question 3 AI this weekTrue or false: ultrapure water is safe to drink because it contains no contaminants. True False

False, and it is the opposite of the intuition. With almost no ions in it, ultrapure water acts as an aggressive solvent and pulls ions out of whatever it touches, including the tissue it passes through. A mouthful harms nobody; making it your water supply would be a serious mistake. Read the piece

Question 4 MES and the floorWhat does ultrapure water's appetite for ions mean for the pipework that carries it? It must run in high-purity plastics rather than copper or ordinary steel It must be carried in glass only It can use any standard plumbing It must be carried under pressure in lead pipe

It would dissolve metal pipe and contaminate itself doing so, so distribution uses high-purity plastics such as PVDF or PFA. For the same reason it is kept moving in a loop rather than stored still, where it would absorb carbon dioxide from the air and lose purity. Read the piece

Question 5 AI this weekRoughly how much water in total goes into making an integrated circuit on one 300mm wafer? About 8,300 litres About 830 litres About 83 litres About 83,000 litres

About 8,328 litres, of which roughly 5,678 litres is ultrapure. The figure cross-checks against an independently reported 2,200 US gallons per wafer with more than 68% ultrapure, which is the same number in different units. Read the piece

Question 6 AI this weekTSMC reported water consumption per unit product for 2024. What was it? 8,328 litres per 12-inch wafer equivalent 1,610 litres per 12-inch wafer equivalent 16.1 litres per 12-inch wafer equivalent 161.0 litres per 12-inch wafer equivalent

161.0 litres per 12-inch wafer equivalent, an 8.7% reduction on 2023. Note that this and the 8,300-litre figure measure different things: one is water passing through the process, the other is what is reported as consumed after recovery. Read the piece

Question 7 AI this weekTrue or false: the water a fab uses is consumed the way fuel is consumed, and does not come back. True False

False. It is used, collected, treated and used again. TSMC reported 284.6 million cubic metres of water recycled through its recovery systems in 2024, plus a further 5.54 million cubic metres of savings. The gap between gross throughput and net consumption is the recycling. Read the piece

Question 8 AI this weekWhy does water show up in decisions about where to build a fab, alongside power and talent? Recovery is harder where water is scarce, so local supply becomes a real constraint Water is the most expensive input to a chip Fabs must be near the sea Chips are cooled by river water

The engineering is the same everywhere; the constraint is local. A fab in a water-rich region can draw and discharge easily. In Arizona, or in Taiwan during the 2021 drought when fabs trucked water in, it cannot, which is why reclamation capacity is built alongside the fab. Read the piece

Question 9 The numberTSMC's Arizona facility has been reported at roughly what daily water intake? About 47.5 million gallons a day About 475,000 gallons a day About 47,500 gallons a day About 4.75 million gallons a day

About 4.75 million gallons a day, with roughly 65% of intake recycled, around 3.5 million gallons, and further reclamation capacity being built out. Read the piece

Question 10 MES and the floorMatch each water figure to what it actually measures.

18.2

8,300

161

284.6 million

Four numbers, four different quantities. The common mistake is to compare the second and the third as if they were the same measurement; one is throughput and the other is net consumption after recovery. Read the piece

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