singing sand

...However, the future of sand supply to meet demand is expected to be increasingly difficult, with issues including conflicts with fishing rights when harvesting sea sand, issues with residual salt and particle size after desalination, production costs associated with the large amount of energy consumed for crushed sand, particle shape issues with classified recovered sand, intermittent supply of dam deposit sand, and limited uses due to the high impurities of decomposed granite soil. Aggregate Gravel [Iwasaki Takashi]
[Singing Sand]
There is a type of quartz sand that has a unique sound-making characteristic, and is called singing sand, musical sand, or sonorous sand in English. Under natural conditions, sand grains are selected by the action of strong waves and wind and piled up in the same place, and they rarely form on coasts and deserts where foreign objects such as soil and sand are not mixed in. …

*Some of the terminology that mentions "singing sand" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…しかし賦存量が最も豊富と思われる海砂は採取にあたっての漁業権との抵触問題，脱塩処理後の残留塩分と粒度の問題，砕砂についてはエネルギーの大量消費に係る生産コストの問題，分級回収砂では粒形の点で，ダム堆積砂は供給が間欠的になり，まさ土は不純物が多く，用途が限定されるなど，砂の需要に対する供給の前途はますます多難が予想されている。骨材砂利【岩崎 孝】
［鳴き砂］
　鳴き砂あるいは鳴り砂，英語ではsinging sand,musical sand,sonorous sandなどと呼ばれ，特異な発音特性を有する石英質の砂がある。自然条件では，激しい波浪や風の作用で砂粒が淘汰されて同じ場所に堆積し，土砂など異物が混入しないような海岸や砂漠でまれに形成される。…

※「singing sand」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報