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Hey guys, I'm Nate. Welcome back to the workshop.
Today we've got an experiment to see if we can make "magic sand."
That's sand that you can pour into water and it doesn't get wet.
There are commercially available versions of this same idea but we want to know
if we can make it ourselves.
To experiment with this we have a large bag of quartz sand
and three different versions of waterproofing
that we're going to try applying to the surface of the grains of sand.
We have a silicone-based spray, this fabric Scotchgard,
and the two-part NeverWet spray.
All three of these products are supposed to do a very good job of
waterproofing different materials.
So let's apply some to three different batches of sand
and see which one gives us the most magic.
You can see I don't have a very thick layer of sand in each of these.
That's because I want to get really good coverage with our waterproofing spray.
If the sand is too deep in the trays
it will have a really hard time getting through and sticking to all of it.
Now it's time to apply each of our water-coating sprays
to the three batches of sand.
First let's label each pan with its corresponding type of waterproofing
so that we can keep track of which one's going on which.
This is silicone, so we'll put SIL for silicone.
SG for Scotchgard
NW for never wet.
All three of thesewaterproofing systems have warnings on the cans
that you should be careful not to breathe too much of the fumes,
so let's take these outside and spray them down.
First up is the silicone spray.
You can see a slight change in color as the spray coats the sand.
It's veery mild, though.
Next up, the Scotchgard.
And finally, the NeverWet. Now this does come in a two-
part system so we'll have to apply Step 1, let that dry
for the appropriate amount of time, and then apply Step 2.
Now we've sprayed each of these batches of sand with waterproof coating
so we need to let them dry out a little bit.
I kind of wanted to try using a heat gun or putting them in the oven
at low temperature to speed up the drying,
but all of them contain warnings about not letting them
get near any sources of heat and sparks, anything like that
and so I think we just have to do it the old-fashion way and let them dry out.
Since we're not actively spraying into the oven it would probably be fine but,
just in case, I don't want to risk it.
I don't think Grant wants me to blow up his oven.
There we go. We've got one side of our sand sprayed
with each of our different types of waterproofing
and it's mostly dry at this point. So what I want to do is stir it up
and then flatten it out again and spray on a new coat
to try and make sure that we have all of the different edges of our sand nicely coated.
That's something. Our first layer of NeverWet
kind of makes the sand bond together into sheets.
We're just going to break that up.
Turn it back into particles of sand.
There we go. Now let's add new coatings to each of these.
And I think what I'm going to do is spray on a coat and then just sort of stir it up,
spray on some more, stir it up and do a few layers all at once to really try and get
all of the coating spread very evenly around the sand.
There we go. We've got all three of our sands coated in
our different waterproofing materials. Now let's let them dry out completely
and see which one has the most magic.
The NeverWet, of course, because it is a two-stage process,
will need the second layer applied in a little while.
Let's let this dry for 30 to 40 minutes, then let's do the same thing
with the Step 2 of our NeverWet.
At this point, all three batches of sand with all three types of coatings have had
the opportunity to dry overnight, so now I think it's time to see what happens
if we pour them into water.
It is interesting to see that the different coatings have left
slightly different textures on our sand.
To test this sand out I've got a whole bunch of water in our glass jar
and we're just going to try adding spoonfuls of each different type of sand
in here at a time and see what happens.
To start out I think we'll test the sand coated in the NeverWet
because I suspect that's going to give us the best hydrophobic results.
So that mostly just looks like a spoonful of sand,
but the sand isn't really getting permeated by the water.
It's just sort of there.
Now let's see what happens when I take the spoon back out of the water.
Instantly goes dry again. Let's do that again.
Underwater
Back to dry powder.
Underwater; dry powder.
Every time it does that a little bit of sand falls off the spoon
into the surface of the water, just kind of floating there.
What if I can gather back up?
Nope, I just made more fall off.
The pressure of the water is kind of holding the sand on the spoon;
it doesn't really fall off.
All right, I'm gonna lift the spoon out of the water at this same angle.
I think once it's out of the water all the dry sand will just fall right off.
It fell off and then it's floating. It repels the water so much
that none of the water can get in or above it to make it sink.
I'm just going to push it under and see what happens.
There it goes. Just clumps together as one piece down at the bottom of the water.
Pull that out.
Oh—back to powder immediately.
This stuff really likes to float well because it doesn't like to go under the water.
Let's try more.
It's under the water, but the part that's still on the surface
is still repelling the water and holding air in it so much that it's making it float.
Let's try and just get it to sink. There it goes.
Just this solid block of sand holding itself together underwater.
It just doesn't want to mix with the water at all.
And it's very buoyant because it has so much air trapped inside it.
That is some very neat underwater sculpture-like things.
In addition to the NeverWet we did try using some Scotchgard
and some silicone waterproofing spray and we got mixed results with both of them.
Both of them made the sand somewhat hydrophobic
and we were able to pour the sand down into the bowl
and it would clump up the way you would expect it to.
But after a little bit of time it did seem like the water
was starting to soak in and get the sand wet.
In the end of the silicone spray and the Scotchgard were somewhat effective,
but the NeverWet worked much better.
Now there is one more test that I wanted to do to make our sand even more magical.
This sand is sort of a white color and it's kind of boring.
We want to try and find something to make it really pop
when you're playing with it in the water.
This is a new batch of sand that's not yet waterproof.
I have this turquoise, alcohol- based ink and my airbrush
and I'm going to try and see if I can color the sand before I waterproof it.
All right. I had to turn the psi way down
because the air was just blowing the sand all over the place,
but by holding it a fair way away I am able to get some of that ink out onto the sand.
It's still blowing the sand around a little bit, but not too badly.
That's one layer of sort of coating on there. Let's mix it up and add some more.
We're definitely getting some good color added.
Just takes a while.
Well, we haven't coated every side of every grain of sand on here
but I think we do have a nice turquoise color going.
Let's try waterproofing this and then see how it looks in the water.
There we go. Our colored sand is now coated. Let's let it dry out
and then put it into some water.
Let's see if now we have some brightly colored hydrophobic sand.
That looks pretty cool.
There we have it: An experiment using three different
types of sprays and some sands to see which works best
to make our magic water-resistant sand.
I think we got the best results using our NeverWet although,
like I explained before, I don't like how it clumps up
after the first stage. You really have to go in and break it back up
into the individual grains of sand before you apply the second coat
Using a little bit of alcohol ink and an airbrush did a
great job of dyeing our sand a beautiful turquoise color.
I did use the silicone spray on the turquoise sand which worked fairly well.
At this point I do kind of wish I'd used the NeverWet
as that is a little bit more hydrophobic.
It repels the water a little bit better.
If you want to make your own version of this magic sand,
I would recommend going with the NeverWet and just give it a little bit of time
really breaking it up into fine particles
before you start adding on the second coat.
This stuff is pretty fun to play with. It makes really cool formations under water.
It's really fun to pull it up out of the water and watch the water just break off of it
and leave the dry sand underneath.
If your sand does get a little bit wet, pull it out of the water, squeeze it off,
let it dry off in a paper towel or on a tray.
Once it's dry it will be returned to its water-repellent state
and you can pour it back in again
and watch it form those cool twisty, swirly shapes under water.
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I have this turquoise, alcohol-based..
To start out..
[Captioned by Will Robinson at ytranslator.com]