Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

hello...
i`ve only two question here,

1)can the sand produce electricity when i compress it?

2)how much it generate?

my friend said,the sand can generate electricity,and it called piezoelectric,
so I hope you can help me

Hi,

Yes it is possible to generate an electric charge by squeezing certain crystals. The effect is called the piezoelectric effect, and quartz (the mineral most sand is made of) is one of the materials that shows this effect. Here is a Science Buddies project that discusses this (you will probably want to explore the links in the writeup tolearn more about the piezoelectric effect):

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p032.shtml

This is a very interesting physical phenomenon!

Best regards,

Barrett L Tomlinson

As was said, you should start out your project by doing some back-ground research on your topic. Try googleing around with various key words from your topic and see what you get! Best luck on your project!