Is the World Really Running Out of Sand?

Sand: a treatise...

There’s a lot changing in the construction industry, and a lot of growth in the need for materials like sand and gravel. But I don’t think it’s fair to say the world is running out of those materials. We’re just more aware of all the costs involved in procuring them, and hopefully taking more account for how they affect our future and the environment.

Practical Engineering is a YouTube channel about infrastructure and the human-made world around us. It is hosted, written, and produced by Grady Hillhouse. We have new videos posted regularly, so please subscribe for updates. If you enjoyed the video, hit that ‘like’ button, give us a comment, or watch another of our videos!

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This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Contact an engineer licensed to practice in your area if you need professional advice or services. All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.

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This video is sponsored by Nebula.
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Shutterstock, Pond5, and Videoblocks.
Tonic and Energy by Elexive is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Video by Grady Hillhouse
Edited by Wesley Crump
Produced by Ralph Crewe
Graphics by Nebula Studios

[Psygnosis]

Concrete is to Practical Engineering as is The Refrigeration Cycle is to Technology Connections

[Ladadadada]

Fun fact: 2% of the world's yearly consumption of sand goes through a clear perspex box in Grady's garage.

[Wetcorps]

"Those costs have always been there. We just externalized them onto the environment and our future."
Strong line here.

[almitydave]

Alright, so the key takeaways are:
1) manufactured sand is more coarse and irritating due to the sharp edges
2) natural sand is better at getting everywhere due to the rounded grains reducing friction

[inlovewithgoats]

How often you said "I also made a video on this" really showed me how much I have learned watching this channel over the years. Thank you so much!

[flowerheit]

"The costs have always been there, we've just externalized them onto our environment or our future" is a statement that holds true for SO MANY THINGS where people complain it's getting more expensive!

[Imevul]

"Hammer the point home"... "grain surgery". The puns in this video are off the charts, and I'm all for it!

[Psikeomega]

Field carpenter here, I've spent some time working in construction quality control for a little bit which means I'm working alongside engineers on a regular basis. We don't so much use concrete in my niche industry, but we use grout for the work we specifically do. We have 3 different engineered ratios of mix to water that we are supposed to use. One of them is flowable. You have no idea how many workers I've seen walk on one of my jobs and want to mix it by eye and feel because "this is how we always mix it" instead of following the engineering. We usually have to hand pump or funnel it so it has to be off the flowable chart. Then I see them with their full weight on the pump handle because they don't understand why their stuff mix can't go through the equipment and it costs the company and customer money in wasted materials and manpower to clean the equipment, and time to remove the grout that has voids and bubbles.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I fully understand the frustration that happens when the guy with the clipboard looks away and the workers do what they feel is better than the spec book

[empressassassin]

I'm a geologist, and it's so novel to see things from ths "other side of the fence", so to speak. Even just hearing about the way sand is classified is so interesting! Of course, I knew that the level of specificity required for our measurements vs yours is different, but there's something very strange about seeing it in practice.

[micahgordon]

I was a geotechnical / environmental driller for ten years, ten years ago. This episode brought back some fantastic memories. Two things I will never forget are; "dirt is a dirty word" and "overburden is not a burden, it's some peoples life's work". Drilling in saturated sands / silts resulted in some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career. Understanding soil composition is vital, not only to provide good samples to the engineer, but also to recover your equipment from the borehole. This was another great episode and hit close to home for me, thanks and keep it up!

[Skjutentrast]

I worked as a concrete technician at a plant a while back, during which we transitioned from using riverbed sand to crushed rock for the 0-4 sand. The plan was also to phase out the 0-2 in the same way. 0-8 and 4-8 etc were always crushed rock. This was done due to sand running out close by, and continued extraction would have had an impact on the ground water.
You hit most of the points, like how you have to adjust V/C ratios and add some chemicals to get the new recipies, but for us the most noticable difference was the wear and tear on our mixers.
Parts that used to be replaced yearly now had to be changed 3-4 times a year. The sharp edges of the crushed stuff does not play nice with machinery.
Anyhow, I think it is somewhat true that we are running out of natural sand in many places. But it is always a local shortage.

[Deneberus]

1:50 "Sand is any granular material that is at least 85% sand."
Hmm yes the sand here is made out of sand.

[rmanami]

I like sand. It's fine and useful and ubiquitous and is everywhere.

[earpiercing]

I work at a Geotechnical engineering company as a lab technician. Every day I do grain size analysis testing and use the grain size textural triangle. I'm personally not in the field as much, but we do all of those concrete tests that you mentioned as well. It was really cool to see my day job discussed in a YouTube video from one of my favorite channels. Thank you Grady.

RCA (Recycled Concrete Aggregate) is never fun to run a grain size analysis on because of how dusty it always is. I just felt like adding that bit of information :)

[errorunknown]

At my school my group did an entire project on the feasibility of recycling concrete as sand for our senior design project. We found that it was a pretty good replacement for a good portion of the sand even if the concrete used was old.

[Nighthawkinlight]

Excellent video! What a weird thing for a fake sand fact to have spread so far and wide. A good reminder to be careful about repeating things I really don't know anything about.

[DM-yjqf]

as usual it's not that we're running out of X, it's that we're running out of CHEAP X

[MyrKnof]

0:56 man, if you had said "taken for granite" i'd have spat my drink..

[alystair]

Thanks so much for the excellent subtitles/CC - the effort is worth it!

[marijandesin]

You get an instant 👍 like for giving the fact straight up
I'd like to encourage other youtubers to adopt this format