Large Sheets of Carbon Nanotubes Produced

StCredZero brings news that scientists have developed sheets of nanotubes that measure up to three feet by six feet, and they promise "slabs 100 square feet in area as soon as this summer." The developers see uses for the sheets in electromagnetic shields and airplane construction, and according to the Next Big Future blog, the sheets could also impact the development of solar sails. "The sheets, which the company can produce on its single machine at a rate of one per day, are composed of a series of nanotubes each about a millimeter long, overlapping each other randomly to form a thin mat. The tensile strength of the mat ranges from 200 to 500 megapascals--a measure of how tough it is to break. A sheet of aluminum of equivalent thickness, for comparison, has a strength of 500 megapascals. If Nanocomp takes further steps to align the nanotubes, the strength jumps to 1,200 megapascals."

Ballistic carbon computing

[Prysorra]

Rudimentary quantum computing can be done with the ballistic nature of how electrons flow through a sheet of graphene, or in this case, a carbon nanotube. Expect to see computing related articles.

If you don't understand what it mean to say that electrons move in a "ballistic" manner through these nanotubes, imagine that cool trick your math teach showed you in high school with marbles and pegs making a bell curve. Now imagine being able to change the outcome by removing a lot of peg, and then making your computer understand the results.

Re:

[hughperkins]

Link about the marbles/pegs/bell curve:

http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/cousined/lego/5-Machines/Galton/Galton.html [umontreal.ca]

Ballistic electrons in graphene:

http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=2340.php [nanowerk.com]

Forget electromagnetic shielding

[nurb432]

If this stuff is as strong as aluminum, why aren't we using it to actually build things like cars and buildings?

Has anyone leaked the details of how their process works beyond the little 'teaser' in the article? Could it be scaled down to personal size? Im thinking it would be great to add their process to a home 3D printer.

Re:Forget electromagnetic shielding

[dreamchaser]

If this stuff is as strong as aluminum, why aren't we using it to actually build things like cars and buildings?

Because they are just learning how to create and manipulate such materials? Your question is like a bronze age smith who knows that small bits of iron can be found and worked saying "How come we haven't replaced bronze with this stuff yet?" It's an engineering challenge is all. As production techniques improve it will be easier and cheaper to make.

Also, note that it's just the tensile strength that is comparable to aluminum. They said nothing about it's shear strength or rigidity.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

Exactly. They can produce 1, 3 foot by 6 foot sheets per day. Granted they could create more machines, and have more companies producing it, but at current rates, it would take far too long to produce anywhere near the necessary amount to be able to use this in commercial applications.

Re:

[Colin Smith]

or it's fatigue characteristics.

Re:

[Azarael]

The property mentioned in the article is only covers one property of the material. Different types of Carbon Fiber are already being used for sports car bodies, bicycles and countless other things. In the case of bicycles, yes carbon fiber allows you to create a light frame, but from what I understand, aluminum frames are still stiffer, more shock absorbent, more durable and most importantly, more cost effective. Until carbon materials can match aluminum in these properties, and in cost effectiveness, alumi

Re:Forget electromagnetic shielding

[kuhneng]

For bikes, aluminum frames are certainly stiffer, but they're substantially less shock absorbing.

One of the reasons carbon fiber is used is the ability to choose different properties on different axes. Many cyclists want a frame that absorbs road vibration (longitudinally flexible) while being as stiff as possible laterally to transmit pedaling force efficiently and maneuver aggressively.

Re:

[smellsofbikes]

Depends on the aluminum frame: did you ever ride an old Vitus 979 or Alan? Not stiff.
Stiffness is dependent on the modulus of elasticity and the cube of the tube diameter (basically.) Gary Klein figured out that large, thin-wall aluminum would allow you to build a frame that retained the stiffness of steel while lowering the weight, by vastly increasing the diameter of the tube. Since aluminum has a similar *specific* modulus of elasticity of steel (the modulus divided by the density) but has a lower den

Re:

[trewornan]

Which raises the interesting question of how flammable this stuff is (or maybe it's inflammmable).

Re:

[bughunter]

It doesn't matter what we do with it...

As long as we make a lot of it, and use it to sequester atmospheric carbon (from CO2 and CH4, natch, yielding 2 H2O).

Re:

[Zibblsnrt]

This is probably a stupid question on my part no doubt, but why would we want cars to be made of harder materials than they are already?

Wouldn't a safer car be one that's so soft that even if it hits you it's like a pillow hitting you? Meaning the least hard possible is preferable?

You can afford to sacrifice strength in the skin of a car, but you can't so much when you're dealing with something like its engine which is less forgiving with that sort of thing. A car with all the give of Tupperware would be fi

Does Ted Stevens know about this?

[longacre]

Conceivably now a big truck AND the Internet could be fabricated out of a series of tubes [youtube.com]!

Re:

[owlnation]

Conceivably now a big truck AND the Internet could be fabricated out of a series of tubes!

And shielding to protect us from simile overload!

Re:

[longacre]

Didn't mean to offend you, Senator.

Didn't nanotubes explode with flash photography?

[tassii]

Do we really want an airplane that will explode if some coherent light hits it?

Re:Didn't nanotubes explode with flash photography

[Loconut1389]

It seems you're correct correct [udel.edu]- do you suppose they've gotten around this?

Re:

[trewornan]

Well you could paint it.

Re:

[The Living Fractal]

First off, they don't explode all at once, they explode tube by tube and the explosions are very small. It takes a fairly powerful direct laser strike to cause this to happen. I.E. a hand-held laser pointed at a plane will be about as useful as shooting a BB gun at it.

Second... I guess you've never heard of... paint.

And finally... not all carbon nanotubes are created equally.

FUD.

Availibility

[UDGags]

(First off I work in this area) I know one we have tried purchasing these sheets in the past a couple time and have not been able to. They might be able to make them but the availability is still very low for any research or products.

i want one

[FudRucker]

to replace my tinfoil hat...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hydrogen storage

[Weaselmancer]

I'm much more excited about the possibilities for hydrogen storage rather than new construction material.

Poke around a bit and see what I mean. [google.com]

Re:

[FudRucker]

hydrogen wont do consumers much good unless someone finds a way to extract it economically enough and in mass quantities to replace gasoline (for automobiles)...

Hmmmm.

[WindBourne]

So, we have to have a way to produce h2 economically, which is normally just stripping it from natural gas and then releasing CO2. Assuming that we can find a cheap way to split water (which we do not have yet), then you have the issue of conversion. Assume a ICE for this. Basically, you have the same damnable low efficency of a gas or diesel ICE. Of course, we can do Fuel cells, but they are expensive and require constant maintenence. All in all, by the time that these systems come about, The world will be

mass

[overcaffein8d]

A sheet of aluminum of equivalent thickness, for comparison, has a strength of 500 megapascals.

Thickness, yes, but what about mass?

Re:

[wizardforce]

density of carbon nanotubes: 2.6 grams/cm^3 density of aluminum: ~2.7 grams/cm^3 mass=density*volume and assuming the shapes are the same and thickness is the same, so is the volume and in this case nanotubes are slightly less dense than aluminum therfore less mass, and therefore lighter.

Re:

[pimpimpim]

hmm, if I compare how carbon fibre (with considerable lower mass needed for similar strength) has remained a premium product whereas in the same time aluminium has become more of a commodity in e.g. the automotive field, I wonder if this small difference in density will be worth the effort. Maybe when it will become possible to create complete parts made out of correctly aligned tubes in one go it will see an application. Or in special situations, how good can it resist sheering/grinding? Still, you need a

I see a great application for genetic algorithms

[greg_barton]

From TFA:

A computer controlling about 30 different parameters in the process--including temperature, temperature gradient, gas flow rates, and the chemistry of the mix--allows the builders to control the properties of the tubes.

A genetic algorithm [wikipedia.org] is a great way to optimize a set of parameters. If they can find a way to test parameter sets quickly this would be a great opportunity to use a GA to find the best parameters, especially given that there's so many of them.

Re:

[brusk]

It would be IF they could accurately predict the outcome of a given formulation. But that assumption may not hold if our knowledge of these materials' properties is insufficient.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's a series of tubes...

[Jane Q. Public]

If they make the tubes longer, the tensile strength could go WAY up from there...

Will it blend?

[imbaczek]

Determining the toxicity of carbon nanotubes has been one of the most pressing questions in Nanotechnology. Results from various scientific tests on cells have so far proven confusing, with some results indicating it to be highly toxic and others showing no signs of toxicity. This is primarily because of difficulties arising in spotting the nanotubes entering the cells from other carbon-based cell structures such as membranes. A recent research led by Alexandra Porter from the University of Cambridge shows once they are inside the cell, they accumulate in the cytoplasm and cause cell death.

Carbon nanosmoke. Don't breathe this!

(source: wikipedia [wikipedia.org].)

Not necessarily relevant

[Jane Q. Public]

It depends a lot on the properties of the material. For example, while aluminum sheets are made of microscopic crystals, there is little danger of breathing significant amounts of aluminum unless you spend a lot of work processing it into a fine powder first. These sheets may be the same way. Who knows? We don't.

How to reduce aluminium to a fine powder

[patio11]

>>
For example, while aluminum sheets are made of microscopic crystals, there is little danger of breathing significant amounts of aluminum unless you spend a lot of work processing it into a fine powder first.
>>

Step one: reduce the aluminium sheets until they fit in a BlendTec blender.
Step two: turn blender on.
Step three: dump out on table, being careful to avoid aluminium nanosmoke.
Step four: play annoying end of video sound.

insufficient for space elevator

[nguy]

So this is 1-2GPa tensile strength. We need about 60-100GPa tensile strength for a space elevator.

it's a start

[spineboy]

and it's within 2 orders of magnitude to get there. Not too bad. Shouldn't be too hard to engineer, or tweak it to get there.

Re:

[TheHawke]

Space elevators are still out until a cable made out of a continuous single fiber of nanotubes can be fabricated, then woven into a braid capable of withstanding the extreme environment of near-space and space itself. We're not talking a regular 5-strand weave here folks, this new weave will need to be able to resolve any problems by itself. If that cable fails, we're talking 200+ miles of weighty fiber and payload coming down onto the ground at terminal velocity. Even with the light weight to length ratio,

Re:

[nguy]

That's pure fiction, and bad fiction at that. It doesn't matter how you slice it or dice it, the change in angular momentum depends on the mass and the distance, and while a space elevator has a significant mass, it's negligible compared to the planet. And it wouldn't do much damage while falling either: most of it would burn up.

Tensile strength likely to be wrong

[PeterPiper]

I strongly suspect that the tensile strength quoted is actually a typo by the reporter. Either that or he got his facts seriously wrong. It is unfathomable to me how a sheet of carbon nanotubes would be LESS strong than an equivalent sheet of aluminum. And any company that created such a wimpy sheet of nanotubes sure wouldn't be boasting about it.

Re:

[Loke the Dog]

They're not boasting about how strong it is, they are boasting about creating a sheet large enough to be practical of a very promising material. The first cars were slower than horses, people boasted about them anyway.

Re:

[aug24]

I am not a Material Scientist (but IAAPhysicist so here's my guess).

The nanotubes are short and straight. Tensile failures will be 'between nanotubes' not 'of nanotubes'.

As the tubes get longer and better aligned, you'll be absolutely right. (You may be absolutely right already of course...)

Justin.

ok...

[fredrik70]

> If Nanocomp takes further steps to align the nanotubes, the strength jumps to 1,200 megapascals."
anyone who knows how much we need for our space elevator???

Making this much nanotube material...

[MtViewGuy]

...is very important because it paves the way to make highly-advanced products that use carbon nanotubes.

The best example of this are supercapacitor batteries that use carbon nanotubes to dramatically increase the storage capacity of the battery itself. That could make it possible for real plug-in hybrid vehicles with extremely long range or even the possibility by 2020 of a fully-electric vehicle that could seat 4-5 passenger comfortably yet have a range of around 400 km with charging times essentially the

Re:

[StarfishOne]

"[..] charging times essentially the same as the time needed to fill a 16-20 gallon fuel tank on a medium-sized family car"

I am not an electrical expert at all.. but wouldn't such charging times require huge amounts of current to go through the charging wire?

A supercapacitor is very nice.. but I would tend to say that having a large 'tank' and being able to fill it quickly are two different things.

Anyone who can expand a bit on this?

Re:

[MiniMike]

Probably much lighter than aluminum, for the same strength.

The question I have is, how strong could it be for the same weight? Off to rtfa...

Re:

[dwater]

Probably much lighter than aluminum, for the same strength.

The question I have is, how strong could it be for the same weight? Off to rtfa...

Yeah, an obvious omission from the summary. This is all I could get from a cursory look at the fa :

"
It's the light weight of carbon nanotube wires--only about 20 percent of the weight of the same volume of copper wire--that could make them especially attractive for the aerospace industry.
"

but that's in a discussion of using them for wires...can't be bothered to look more closely.

Re:

[Toe, The]

Besides having very different properties [wikipedia.org] from aluminum, and besides the last sentence stating that they can be upped to 1,200 megapascals; this could be considered a proof of concept. Excuse the tautology, but: as technologies develop, they improve.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

One good reason is that aluminum is a limited resource. Although there's lots of it around, current estimates show that it will only last for about 200 more years ( source [amazon.com]). That may seem like quite a long time, but it probably wouldn't hurt to start investigating alternatives before we run out.

Re:

[xant]

Is that a good reason? What limited resource are they using to make these sheets?

Re:Awesome...

[CastrTroy]

Maybe the carbon nanotube sheets are made out of, oh, I don't know, carbon? Seems to me there's no shortage of that stuff..

Re:

[F34nor]

Sorry but you're totally wrong. Go try and buy some carbon fiber, I dare you. You won't find any. My decease friend Alex was working on P motor rockets and could not find enough carbon to make the rocket bodies for love or money. See there's this thing called the Dreamliner made by these people at Boeing and it has pretty much sucked all the carbon out of the planet while giggling at Airbus' aluminum wiring harnesses.

Re:

[way2trivial]

http://www.acp-composites.com/ACP-CAT.HTM [acp-composites.com]
what exactly were you looking for?

Re:Awesome...

[iluvcapra]

People. Carbon nanotubes are made out of people.

!

Re:

[malakai]

Oh, come on. Am I the only one that picked up on the Soylent Green reference?

no.
you're not.
we all got it, and thought it funny (thus the rating).

We didn't feel a need to comment on it. We were just rolling with the deadpan [wikipedia.org] nature of the comment. Which made it even more funny. Funny like your tights Captain Obvious.

Re:

[ScrewMaster]

Well, Mr. Friendly, at the time I commented the OP was rated +1, and I thought it was worth more.

Re:

[bigdavesmith]

If we ever run out of carbon...

You may have a point though. I'd like to see a comparison of all of the materials/chemicals/energy that go into making a sheet of this, versus an equivalent amount of carbon fiber, or aluminum. I doubt it's as environmentally cool as I'm imagining it is.

Re:Awesome...

[chill]

One good reason is that aluminum is a limited resource. Although there's lots of it around, current estimates show that it will only last for about 200 more years ( source).

I don't have a copy of that book, so can't read it in context, but I still have to call bullshit on this.

Aluminum (Aluminium for you Brits) is the most abundant metal [jlab.org] in the Earth's crust. While smelting it is energy intensive, recycling it is significantly less so [alcoa.com]. There is so much that has already been used, and available for recycling, I can't see us running out in the next couple of centuries, if ever.

Re:

[tsotha]

Yeah, not only is it abundant, but all the aluminum that gets used is still here - we're not transmuting it into lead or firing it into the sun. We'd never run out of stuff to recycle even if it wasn't so common.

Re:

[kylegordon]

Aluminium for you Brits

Yes, sadly we weren't subjected to the spelling errors of a certain Mr Hall...

Re:Awesome...

[c6gunner]

I'm not sure who Mr. Hall is, or what he has to do with naming conventions and misspellings, but the original name for Aluminum was "Alumium", which got changed to "Aluminum", before going through a final contortion to become "Aluminium". All three versions were created by Sir Humphry Davy, a British chemist, and the process took roughly 5 years so some confusion over the "proper" spelling is understandable. The usage of Aluminum over Aluminium in the US seems largely due to the fact that Websters Dictionary stuck with his second version of the word.

Re:

[jcaldwel]

I'm not sure who Mr. Hall is, or what he has to do with naming conventions and misspellings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martin_Hall [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Daath]

Websters used aluminium. Hall used "aluminum" in some advertising, and it stuck, apparently. See the etymology on wikipedia [wikipedia.org]...

As with so many things...

[absurdist]

...you Brits invented the language.

We Americans perfected it.

*ducks*

Re:

[Simon Brooke]

...you Brits invented the language.
We Americans perfected it.
*ducks*

s/perfected/never learned/

Re:

[GotenXiao]

We British invented the language.

You Americans perverted it.

Re:

[YttriumOxide]

As a native English speaker that is neither British nor American, I should point out that no-one speaks English "correctly" since we don't have a formal definition for our language (unlike many other languages, especially in Europe).

The history of English is also so incredibly strange that only a madman would consider it a sensible language to use at all, given the choice between it and almost anything else. It's a Germanic language (possibly even fair to say "Old Germanic DIALECT") that was heavily perver

Re:

[Duncan Blackthorne]

I will accept your source at face value; however, carbon is the 6th most abundant element in the Universe [jlab.org]. ;-)

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd]

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/tables/elabund.html [gsu.edu]

Aluminum makes up 8% of the Earth's crust. The earth's composition of carbon appears to be much lower, the same page shows it's 0.03% of the earth's total weight. That doesn't say much of how easy it is to collect either resource, but abundance doesn't seem to be the answer. I think it's the strength-to-weight ratio that makes carbon nanotube materials interesting, but it's still pretty expensive to make.

Re:

[Pseudonym]

According to Wikipedia, there is 76e18 kg of carbon in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and crust. Aluminium, is roughly 8% of the crust. Just taking the lithosphere, that's 8% of 1.4e23 kg, or 1.12e22 kg. So there's 150 or so times more aluminium than carbon by weight. However, this is highly misleading, because: - Al needs to be refined, whereas the C doesn't so much. - A significant portion of the Al is in rock. Not ore, solid rock. Some of it is in oxide crystals, which you know better as gemstones.

Re:

[trewornan]

Oh no . . . if we start using carbon we'll end up with global cooling, the sky is falling, the sky is falling!

Re:

[Vellmont]

Although there's lots of it around, current estimates show that it will only last for about 200 more years

What the hell are you talking about? Aluminum is likely the most recycled metal on the planet. Why would we "run out" of something we re-use, and is the most abundant metal in the earths crust? It might get more expensive.. but we won't "run out".

Aluminum is plentiful, you're thinking bauxite.

[ahfoo]

Bauxite isn't even a mineral. It's just a common industrial name for a kind of rock that includes a variety of minerals and is the most efficient way to produce aluminum using existing technologies. Any clay soil contains large quantities of aluminum. When the great clay shortage hits, I'm sure we'll have plenty of advance notice.

Re:

[David Gerard]

Alumina is a limited resource. Aluminium is 8% of the goddamn crust, so "run out" is a question of how hard it is to extract and how worth it that is. Remember that aluminium used to be a precious metal until the electrolytic process was discovered; if there's enough money in it, it'll be extracted.

Re:

[Simon Brooke]

One good reason is that aluminum is a limited resource.

Uhhmmm... Aluminium [wikipedia.org] is ( by a considerable margin) the most abundant metal on Earth, and the third most abundant element on Earth after oxygen and silicon. It makes up 8% or the mass of the Earth's crust. We're not going to run out any time soon.

Re:

[kesuki]

umm aluminum is the most common metal on earth... the only things more common on earth are Oxygen and silicon. there is less carbon than aluminum man... your book says '200 years left' what a shoddy scientist, that's just the projected lifespan of the mines we are operating, there is WAY more aluminum out there way more... because of how light aluminum is it's almost all in the crust. so it's all fairly accessible as deep mining techniques are improved there are countless deposits of aluminum around the w

Re:

[Gravatron]

I fail to see how scientists studying this are effective scientists studying agriculture tech, or people studying how to best end the violence that consumes most of the third world in some fashion.

Re:

[AvitarX]

If we feed them, then there will be even more demand for amluminum. That sounds like a bad idea.

Re:

[brusk]

Yes, AND they'll want to use aluminum foil to cover the leftovers.

Re:

[aproposofwhat]

OTOH, this would make a wickedly light version of a tinfoil hat...

Re:

[Zibblsnrt]

Because "science" is a monolithic bloc that can't walk and chew gum at the same time, right?

(Really, this sounds like people who were complaining about Pluto's demotion because "all those scientists should have been curing cancer instead.")

Re:

[Duncan Blackthorne]

Aluminum is heavier and less abundant than carbon is, and I suspect these sheets are flexible whereas aluminum is rigid. Also, as someone else pointed out, for the same weight these sheets would be many times stronger than aluminum.

Heavier? I think not.

[Kupfernigk]

I think you will find carbon is actually a little more dense than aluminium, and the numbers quoted are not compelling since heat treatable aluminium alloys are much stronger than the native metal. As for rigidity, you have somehow managed to get to be old enough to post on Slashdot without ever seeing aluminium baking foil.

The truth is, wonder materials that are not yet in real production never actually turn out to be that wonderful. Aluminium has not replaced cast iron in many applications. Cars and ships

Re:

[Deadstick]

Because aluminum weighs twice as much?

rj

Re:

[budgenator]

so basically it will have to compete with Balsa wood and Stika Spruce.

Re:

[Naughty Bob]

Pure aluminum is soft, aircraft grade aluminum (and virtually all aluminum used in the real world) is alloyed with other elements, greatly increasing its strength.

Here's [azom.com] a breakdown of the composition of Aluminum Alloy 6061 to give you an idea...

Re:Mistake in Article?

[zippthorne]

tensile strength != toughness. And, unfortunately, aluminum is not particularly ductile. At least, not when compared to, say, steel.

But aluminum does have a very good strength to weight ratio. Also, it doesn't rust. Instead it forms an oxide layer which prevents further oxidation.

Re:

[zippthorne]

What aluminum doesn't do, but steel does, is rust through. Iron rust exposes more iron to the air, and eventually you've got a nice pile of barn pigment. Note that progress in alloys has developed mixtures that are resistant to this.

Aluminum however just forms that oxide layer, then it stops. A thin layer of oxide prevents any further oxidation (at least until you scratch it, or go hella crazy with the polishing compound.)

Re:

[ScrewMaster]

Wait, hold on... I thought we were talking about the internet... ?

We are. An Internet for bacteria.

Re:

[Torvaun]

No. CNTs are only strong in one direction, and you need at least two directions for a space elevator. If you tried, it would crumple or fall over.

Not necessarily

[Jane Q. Public]

First off, they might only have great tensile strength in one direction, but in this case they are randomly oriented. So the measured tensile strength of the sheet should apply in any direction. But that is probably not relevant to a space elevator anyway, because:

A space elevator does not "stand" on the ground, bearing all that weight. Rather, the space end is at sufficient distance to PULL it up (considerably higher than synchronous-orbit height). The elevator is under tension, not compression. And the

Duh

[ChrisMaple]

Pulled up toward the mass well above the synchronous orbit altitude, by centrifugal force, not gravitational force.

Re:

[trewornan]

Yeah, you're wasting your time trying to explain a space elevator to someone who's this ignorant.

Re:

[Nullav]

With the planet spinning, wouldn't the elevator be more or less slung outwards, in effect 'pulling' it at the area least influenced by the Earth's gravity?

Re:

[fullmetal55]

also what about the next step after the plywood type of cnt-sheets, woven cnts.

Too early for a price...

[argent]

At one sheet per day, in a startup? Figure the annual burn of the company and divide by 365.

Re:

[epine]

One sheet *per machine* per day. Does the FA say they have only one machine?

Most software startups have a lot less than one sheet per day to show for themselves during the pilot phase, unless you're counting bug reports, incomplete features, or functionality postponements.

Re:

[argent]

I think I should have included a smiley or something. What's the smiley for "irony"?

The point is that they haven't found out, yet, how far it can be practically scaled up or how strong they can make it. Any number you come up with could easily be off by five decimal orders of magnitude.

Re:

[meringuoid]

I hear "carbon" and think "black" like some of the bubbly experiments my science teacher showed.

Carbon is black when it's in the form of graphite, like in a pencil, or in a lump of coal. When it's in the form of diamond, it's transparent.

Re:

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Talk to me when it's OVER NINE THOUSAND!