Sand.
It has a way of getting everywhere on a beach day—and for some, it can make or break the whole trip. There’s the way it whips through the air just as sandwiches are being unwrapped, the way it turns blisteringly hot underfoot by midday, and the way it stubbornly clings to every piece of clothing.
But the same stuff people curse at the shore is quietly becoming one of the most important materials on Earth. And it’s starting to run short.
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Shu Yang in the lab.
Shu Yang, the Joseph Bordogna Professor of Engineering and Applied Science in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
“After water, sand is the second-most-used natural resource on the planet—the world goes through roughly 50 billion tons a year, says materials scientist Shu Yang. “That's enough to build a nine-story wall around the entire globe, and we’re pulling it from rivers, coasts, and seabeds faster than the hundreds of thousands of years Earth took to make it.”
Yang, who uses sand to create more sustainable concrete and building materials, says that while places like deserts are covered in sand, “not just any sand will do.” The wind-smoothed grains of dunes are nearly useless for construction, which is part of why a planet seemingly covered in sand can still face a shortage.
Penn Today caught up with Yang to get into the nitty gritty of what’s really going on beneath people’s feet.
It has a way of getting everywhere on a beach day—and for some, it can make or break the whole trip. There’s the way it whips through the air just as sandwiches are being unwrapped, the way it turns blisteringly hot underfoot by midday, and the way it stubbornly clings to every piece of clothing.
But the same stuff people curse at the shore is quietly becoming one of the most important materials on Earth. And it’s starting to run short.
Shu Yang, the Joseph Bordogna Professor of Engineering and Applied Science in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
“After water, sand is the second-most-used natural resource on the planet—the world goes through roughly 50 billion tons a year, says materials scientist Shu Yang. “That’s enough to build a nine-story wall around the entire globe, and we’re pulling it from rivers, coasts, and seabeds faster than the hundreds of thousands of years Earth took to make it.”
