History Main / SandIsWater

* Meredith Ann Pierce's TheDarkangelTrilogy had a Sea of Dust, over which the heroine sails a skiff in the second book. It's even got fisherfolk, whales, and sea serpents.

* Meredith Ann Pierce's ''Darkangel Trilogy'' had a Sea of Dust, over which the heroine sails a skiff in the second book. It's even got fisherfolk, whales, and sea serpents.

* In ''[[AvatarTheLastAirbender Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', the nomadic Earthbender offshoot Sandbenders specialize in manipulating the sand that surrounds them; consequentally, their movements are more akin to those of a waterbender. They apply this power to use small sand skifs to sail around in.

* Scrooge [=McDuck=] from ''DuckTales'' could swim in his money, literally! There are at least two instances of other characters trying to do the same, only to bang their head hard and painfully when landing on the coins, mumbling, "[[LampshadeHanging How does he do that]]?"
** And then there was one story where Scrooge turned the money in his vault into a literal ocean, with the help of Gyro Gearloose building oceanic physics into the building that housed it. It didn't last long: Magica Despell turned the tides against him, and amassing the number of coins needed to simulate an ocean destroyed his financial liquidity.
** Another story had a slightly confused inventor selling a ray that temporarily negated friction and/or inertia on its targets to the Beagle Boys. Obviously, Duckburg is temporarily awash with a tsunami of coins.
* An episode of ''CourageTheCowardlyDog'' has the titular character forced by Eustace's mother to hunt a sand whale, who is trying to get his accordian back from Eustace's mother. And Courage is forced to row a boat in the sand.

* In RayBradbury's ''Martian Chronicles'', Martians had sand ships.

* ArthurCClarke's ''A Fall of Moondust'' is based on the idea that some lunar basins are filled with very fine dust that behaves like a liquid.

* WilliamGoldman described this in great detail in ''ThePrincesBride'' and later lampshades the research he did for it in ''The Color Of Light''.

Water is cool, but how much [[RuleOfCool cooler]] would it be if we replaced it with sand? Rivers, lakes, whirlpools, even whole oceans of sand that behaves more or less exactly like a body of water are common in desert settings. Bonus points if there are ships that sail said sandy seas (say that ten times really fast). You will even often find native life swimming in ([[FlyingSeafoodSpecial or above]]) these seas, with everything from Sand Guppies to full-blown {{Sand Worm}}s.

A commonly found type is the sand whirlpool, which works in a similar manner to [[QuicksandSucks quicksand]] in that anyone who steps into one will be quickly pulled down suffocate.

This is of course an instance of YouFailPhysicsForever. While sand can act like a fluid, it is a non-Newtonian fluid which means it won't act like water. You can stand on it when it is stationary, for example, but not when it is fluidised. Just about everyone must have seen the experiment where you blow air through sand, giving a fluidised bed that behaves like water. It's also extremely abrasive: anything with sand running over it or through it is likely to be scoured down to nothing fairly quickly unless it's [[strike: made of diamond]] harder than quartz, especially if it has mechanical parts. It's also a tad difficult to ''breathe'' sand, whether you attempt it with gills or lungs. But, hey, it's [[RuleOfCool cool enough]] so we can forgive it.

* ''{{Banjo-Kazooie}}'s'' sixth level, Gobi's Desert, there are pools of sand that appear to be boiling. [[CaptainObvious Obviously]], entering these pools without the Wading Boots is hazardous to your health.

* ''{{Banjo-Kazooie}}'s'' sixth level, [[InstantDesertJustAddCactus Gobi's Desert]], there are pools of sand that appear to be boiling. [[CaptainObvious Obviously]], entering these pools without the Wading Boots is hazardous to your health.

* ''{{Banjo-Kazooie}}''

* ''GoldenSun''

This is of course an instance of YouFailPhysicsForever. While sand can act like a fluid, it is a non-Newtonian fluid which means it won't act like water. You can stand on it when it is stationary, for example, but not when it is fluidised. Just about everyone must have seen the experiment where you blow air through sand, giving a fluidised bed that behaves like water. It's also extremely abrasive: anything with sand running over it or through it is likely to be scoured down to nothing fairly quickly unless it's [[strike: made of diamond]] harder than quartz, especially if it has mechanical parts. It's also a tad difficult to ''breathe'' sand, which makes most depictions of sand-swimming carnivores hard to swallow. But, hey, it's [[RuleOfCool cool enough]] so we can forgive it.

This is of course an instance of YouFailPhysicsForever. While sand can act like a fluid, it is a non-Newtonian fluid which means it won't act like water. You can stand on it when it is stationary, for example, but not when it is fluidised. Just about everyone must have seen the experiment where you blow air through sand, giving a fluidised bed that behaves like water. It's also extremely abrasive: anything with sand running over it or through it is likely to be scoured down to nothing fairly quickly unless it's [[strike: made of diamond]] harder than quartz, especially if it has mechanical parts. It's also a tad difficult to ''breathe'' dry sand, which makes most depictions of sand-swimming carnivores hard to swallow. But, hey, it's [[RuleOfCool cool enough]] so we can forgive it.

This is of course an instance of YouFailPhysicsForever. While sand can act like a fluid, it is a non-Newtonian fluid which means it won't act like water. You can stand on it when it is stationary, for example, but not when it is fluidised. Just about everyone must have seen the experiment where you blow air through sand, giving a fluidised bed that behaves like water. It's also extremely abrasive: anything with sand running over it or through it is likely to be scoured down to nothing fairly quickly unless it's [[strike: made of diamond]] harder than quartz, especially if it has mechanical parts. But, hey, it's [[RuleOfCool cool enough]] so we can forgive it.