By Chenhao Liu
Table of Contents
Sand, like gravel, is a gravity block in minecraft. Sand have many uses and is aboundant in a normal world.
The best way to obtain sand is from a desert or beach using an efficiency 4 or 5 diamond shovel which will allow the sand to be instant mined. Another way to mine sand is to place torches below the sand before breaking the block supporting the sand where the sand will fall onto the torches and break.
Deserts can be found in all worlds. They are slightly rarer than plains biome but they are usually large in size and can contain temples.
Beaches are found near the ocean or rivers actings as a medium between it and another biome. Beaches can be easily found by sailing near the shore of an ocean and can sometimes hold chests that contain valuable loot that are supposed to be the reward of a treasure hunt.
Sand have many uses including making concrete and glass.
As seen in the conrete page, sand is one of the main ingredient for making concrete along gravel where each concrete powder block equates to about half of a block of sand and gravel and one eighth of a dye. The recipie can only be make with exactly four sand and gravel blocks in a crafting table.
Sand can also be put into furnaces to make glass, a useful, transparent block that is widely used in many builds.
Since sand is a gravity block, it can be easily used to get rid of liquids by dropping it into the liquid where it will remove the liquid such as filling a pond with sand by building a platform above it where sand can be easily placed.