I showed this image to a friend of mine, and they said "What does that have to do with rocks or stones?" Therefore, I've decided to make this description a bit more detailed.

Silicon is the second most abundant thing on earth (oxygen is the first). Silicon rarely in nature in the form shown above - it usually occurs as oxide or silicates. Sand, quartz, rock crystal, amethyst, agate, flint, jasper, and opal are some of the forms in which the oxide appears. Granite, hornblende, asbestos, feldspar, clay, mica are some of the numerous silicate minerals.

The electronics industry uses thin slices of ultra-pure silicon (~99.9999999%) to etch microscopic "circuits" onto. These are then "packaged" into what most people know as "chips" or "ICs." How small are the silicon components? Imagine around 125,000,000 transistors on the surface of something the size of your fingernail. How pure? For every 10,000,000,000 silicon atoms, only one non-silicon atom can be allowed - and we think cleaning our sensors is hard! ;) In order to get the silicon this pure, a lot of work is required. This is a detailed process that I don't know much about - http://www.wafernet.com/PresWK/h-ptl-as3_wsc_siltronic_com_pages_training_pages_Silicon_Intro-1.htm seems to be informative on this.

To make a long story short, the "rock" in the image above is from an ultra-pure silicon ingot that probably had less than 99.9999999% purity, and since the raw materials are as valuable as sand, it was just discarded. Fortunately someone must have collected it, broken it up, and sold it - I got that piece for $3.

So, the subject of the photo is the piece of silicon, and surrounding it are some of the things it makes possible.