If you've ever been to the beach, which we'll presume you have, you'll know that you'll have to spend a lot of time to scrub sand off your body. It just sticks to use, that's what it is. But just why doesn't it stick to Olympic volleyball players? That's because the Olympics is using a special, highly regulated type of sand.
According to Reuters, the sand used for Olympic beach volleyball is strictly regulated—"no stones or shells, not too coarse nor too compact, not too fine so it does not stick to players' bodies." I like this sort of sand already.
Back in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics, the sand was imported from Hainan, China and hosed and raked regularly to keep it from getting packed too densely. Could there be a way to develop synthetic sand in the future? According to Wikipedia:
The most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal settings is silica, usually in the form of quartz. The second most common form of sand is calcium carbonate, for example aragonite, which has mostly been created, over the past half billion years, by various forms of life like coral and shellfish.
[Fourth Place Medal]
