Sand

A new industrial-scale “sand battery” has been announced for Finland, packing 1 MW of power and a capacity of up to 100 MWh of thermal energy for use during those cold polar winters. The new battery will be 10 times bigger than a prior pilot plant.

Sandblasters are great for removing paint and rust from surfaces but they're generally not considered home-use tools, since they must be used with an air compressor. The BLSTRsander is different, in that it's self-contained and compressor-free.

Thanks to our high demand for concrete, the world may eventually run out of accessible sand. Scientists at Rice University have now shown that substituting graphene can not only save sand, but makes concrete lighter, stronger and tougher.

The James Webb Space Telescope has made the first direct analysis of clouds on a nearby alien world. These aren’t just made of water vapor but also sand, which would move around the planet much like Earth’s water cycle.

When it comes to high-end, high-performance bicycles, most people look to materials like carbon fiber and titanium. Thanks to a technique utilized in the building of the Hypocrite gravel bike, however, aluminum can also fit the bill quite nicely.

When baby sea turtles hatch from their buried eggs, they use their powerful flippers to make their way up through the sand. A new "sand-swimming" robot, inspired by those hatchlings, could one day save lives or even explore other planets.

There are few things as fun as throwing rooster tails and sliding turns in the sand. Miles of sand dunes open to the public for ATV, UTV, and off-road vehicle driving are to be had near Glamis. We attended Camp RZR 2022 and saw it all first hand.

Concrete is a popular building material, enough so that one of its key ingredients – sand – is in short supply. Scientists are thus now exploring the possibility of replacing that sand with glass waste that would otherwise end up in landfills.

Farmers will often place sheets of plastic on the ground along their crop rows, in order to help hold moisture in the soil. According to a new study, however, the use of wax-coated sand may be a cheaper and greener way to go.

Robots are great explorers, but one environment that’s tricky for them to navigate is through the ground. Now, engineers at UCSB and Georgia Tech have developed a snake-like robot that uses a range of methods to burrow through soft sand or soil.

​If you look through the gallery, you’ll likely get the impression that we used towing with pickup trucks as an excuse to spend a day on the sand dunes in ATVs touring Zion Park. You’d be 99 percent correct in that assumption. It turns out though, even for experts, towing is more than it appears.

In 2011 the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spotted dark streaks in the dust that appear in summer and vanish in winter, hinting at the influence of flowing water. On closer inspection however, a new NASA report suggests the answer may not be so simple.