Sand
Sand is the reference powder: it falls, piles into cones and settles under every liquid lighter than itself.
- Movement
- Powder — falls and piles up
- Weight
- 5 / 9 (heavier sinks through lighter)
- Lifetime
- Permanent
- Glow
- None
At each update a grain of sand tries to drop into the cell below; if that is blocked, it tries the two diagonals. It never slides straight sideways. That rule alone produces the familiar cone: a stream poured onto one spot builds a heap with sloping flanks, and grains roll off whichever side is open.
Sand has weight 5. Water, acid and oil are lighter, so a grain dropped into any of them trades places with the liquid beneath and keeps going until it lands on something at least as heavy or on a static surface. Lava is the exception among liquids: at weight 6 it outweighs sand, so grains rest on a lava surface, and lava poured onto a dune works its way down through it.
Salt and gunpowder share sand’s weight, so mixtures of the three never separate; they just pile together. Seed and ash are lighter at 4, which means sand poured onto a bed of seed sinks through it and the seed ends up above.
Sand has no reactions whatsoever. Fire, lava, acid and water all leave it unchanged, so it is the safe choice whenever you want mass without chemistry. Real sand melts into glass at very high temperatures; Sandlab does not model that, so sand sitting on lava stays sand indefinitely.
Try it yourself
- Swap two layers. Inside a narrow wall tube, paint a band of seed and pour sand on top of it. The yellow grains work down through the green ones until the layers have traded places, with seed above and sand below.
- Grains on a lava lake. Fill a wall basin with lava and sprinkle sand over it: the sand sits on the glowing surface instead of sinking. Then drop a blob of lava onto a dry heap of sand and it trickles down through the heap to the floor.
- Overflow by displacement. Fill a cup almost to the brim with water and pour sand into it. The sand collects at the bottom and the waterline climbs; keep pouring and water spills over the edge.
Reactions
Sand has no reactions in Sandlab: nothing it touches changes it, and it changes nothing. What it does depends only on its weight and how it moves.
Tip
Because it displaces lighter liquids, sand poured into a full container raises the liquid level. That is a way to push water over a rim without ever touching the water.