Sand

Sand is a fairly common block, found near Water on normally generated maps. Like Gravel, this block is affected by gravity and will fall to the lowest solid block in the z-coordinate it is located or placed in. It is possible to suffocate with careless use of sand, being crushed beneath the fall. If the lowest block in a collumn, below Sand blocks, is occupied by a Torch, the Sand block will disintegrate into a sand resource instead.

In Indev or Infdev, a block of sand can be smelted into a block of glass. Also in Indev mode, atop a floating islands map, there is an occasional chance to find floating platforms of sand and/or Gravel connecting the islands together. However, removing a floating sand/gravel block or adding a block to the landmass may cause all the sand and/or Gravel to fall down its' z-coordinate. The effect can be reproduced by placing sand on top of a Minecart as the bottom layer will not fall once the minecart is removed.

Sand can be used in conjunction with torches to create self-sealing hallways; See Airlock

History
Sand was removed at revision 0.0.19a, but returned in version 0.0.20a. It was removed due to lack of room in the UI.

A glitch was present in Single Player for quite some time that caused water to flood from blocks affected by gravity if placed against a wall but not on the ground. The bug has since been fixed.

Trivia

 * Covering your player with sand using the manipulation of gravity, you can see tunnels, caves, and even large lava flows on Alpha.