First off Thank you so Much for helping me, or trying your best. So I am in an 8th Grade honors class and we have to make a 3D model of our givin Element. My element is Silicon. Now I know someone asked about this already but everyone does the styrofoam. I wanted to do something out said the box and totally cool so I can get a better grade =). Can you please help as soon as possible if you have any ideas? Please and Thank you =).
With Si, you have 14 protons, 14 neutraons, and 14 electrons to deal with. That is a lot of pieces to put together in a way that everything can be seen. The geometry of the suborbitals in the outer shell is going to be quite difficult to model as you have 4 electrons that will most likely end up with one electron in each of 4 out of 7 of the suborbitals in the third shell.
Your biggest challenge to making a reasonably accurate model is getting the scale and distances proportional. If you really want to prove that you understand the geometries and can explain it, you should think about how to represent the orbital probability spaces. This is a hard concept to understand and a very difficult one to model in a way that is representative and not confusing.
Since you probably have to transport your model from where you build it (presumably at home) to where you have to show it (presumably school), you will face some construction issues. Atoms have a lot of empty space in them with a big mass in the middle so coming up with some kind of a stand to hold it will also be a challenge.
In my opinion, it isn't what you use to make the model but the care and understanding you demonstrate in its accuracy and ability to convey that understanding. Protons and neutrons are very big with respect to the electrons and the outermost electron is a long way from the center of the atom in terms of proton or electron diameters.
Almost anything you can physically build won't be able to convey the motion of the electrons in their expected orbits.
Did you mean a model of a silicon crystal rather than a model of a silicon atom? I suspect you were thinking of the crystal model made with styrofoam balls and toothpicks. You could make the atoms out of "sculpy" , a clay like material that hardens at modest temperatures in an ordinary cooking oven. You would have to make holes for the connecting sticks before baking the balls. the model might look nicer than the styrofoam ball model.
I don't think you would get much credit for using one of the kits (drilled wooden balls and small springs to connect them) available at science stores.
If you are doing an atomic model of silicon, an interesting spin on the project would be to use several different models of an atom. The history of the atomic model is pretty interesting because it starts out with the "billiard ball" model. The billiard ball model was the idea that an atom is a solid sphere, like a billiard ball. The atomic model changes through history until we get to the electron cloud model by Schrodinger and Heisenberg. If you take a look at modern chemistry textbooks, you can see that many different types of atomic models are used to explain different concepts in chemistry! Here are a few websites talking about different atomic models
So I am in an 8th Grade honors class and we have to make a 3D model of our givin Element. My element is Silicon. 
Now I know someone asked about this already but everyone does the styrofoam. I wanted to do something out said the box and totally cool so I can get a better grade =). Can you please help as soon as possible if you have any ideas? Please and Thank you =). 
