I’m sure I’m not alone in being someone who loves playing around in the sand at a beach even though I’m pushing 30. My friends and I always seem to end up building some kind of sand castle whenever we all make our way down there even though we usually have no intention of doing so. There’s probably some nostalgia at work there, I mean almost everyone has great memories of playing the sand as a child, but I’ve also been told it’s actually quite therapeutic something a cursory stroll through Wikipedia appears to verify. However bringing the beach with you is usually frowned upon (What do you mean I can’t make sand castles on the carpet??) but it seems like there’s a pretty awesome substitute in the form of Moon Sand.
It’s a pretty awesome substance, one that’s been around for some time from what I can gather, as it emulates the properties of wet sand pretty well without requiring water. I haven’t been able to track down the exact polymer that they use (confusingly the hydrophobic sand I blogged about also carries the name moon sand) but it seems a workable substitute can be made with good old fashioned corn starch. That does require water however which leads me to believe that the polymer they use has some non-Newtonian properties to it as that’s exactly what you get when you mix corn starch and water. If I could find the exact polymer they’re using (searching for non-toxic non-Newtonian polymers didn’t give me any viable leads) so if you happen to know what it is I’d be keen to hear from you.
One of the interesting points that came up in my research to this is people wondering whether or not this would be anything like real moon sand. Strangely enough the surface of the moon is coated in a layer of what you could classify as sand but it’s formed quite differently and it’s called regolith. Sand on earth is made by rock being slowly eroded away, typically by some form of moving water. Regolith on the other hand has rather violent origins with its primary mode of creation being through impacts on the surface by meteors. That’s why you don’t have regolith on earth as the amount of impacts required to generate it simply don’t happen (thankfully) due to our atmosphere. The moon on the other hand isn’t so lucky and gets bombarded constantly with generates the layer of dust upon it.
However that regolith isn’t composed of worn particles like sand is, instead the base structures are typically jagged and this actually became an issue with the early sample return missions to the moon. Those jagged particles stick to everything they and actually punctured the vacuum membrane on the sample return jars, contaminating them. More interesting still is that regolith appears to be highly reactive as Armstrong and Aldrin (and many other astronauts) reported smelling gunpowder after completing their moon walks something that wasn’t reported by scientists studying the samples back home. Moon Sand by comparison is quite inert and not at all abrasive.
Now I just need an excuse to buy some of this. I mean it’d be completely normal for a near 30 year old to do this, right?
