During a recent visit Andrew and his brother Zach were brainstorming all kinds of creative things. (They amaze me with their creative thinking and natural curiosity.) One of those things had to do with creating pottery out of sand. Would just adding water to sand and then molding it to the shape of a container work? We decided we needed to test this idea to find out. Andrew and Zach molded the sand to the shape of measuring cups and then set the cups in the sun to speed up the evaporation process, hoping once the water evaporated the sand would hold together in some way. Andrew made several requests for me to follow up with him regarding the results since their visit was coming to an end that afternoon. A couple weeks later I spoke with Andrew on the phone. He was quick to ask me how the experiment worked. I gently shared with him that unfortunately it didn't. We discussed how adding an adhesive might work for helping the items hold shape.
Andrew, as I've been thinking of you, I couldn't help but check out some stuff to share. Hope you enjoy this information on sandstone, ways for making sand hold shape, and products that might be of interest to you!
1. Sandstone - Nature's Process: "Sandstone is a coarse-grained sedimentary rock formed by the consolidation and compaction of sand and held together by natural cement, such as silica. An extremely hard and tough material, it consists of consolidated masses of sand deposited by moving water or by wind. Largely the cementing material often determines the color of the rock, iron oxides causing reddish-brown or red sandstone, and the other materials producing white, yellowish, or grayish sandstone."
More . . .
2. Interesting Products: Moon Sand and DeltaSand
3. US Patent 5711795 -- Compressible and Moldable Toy Sand Composition
