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Welcome back!
Magic Sand Wand Puzzle: Move the steel ball through the sand to the other end of the tube. Amazingly it can be done in less than 6 seconds! Hint: spinning won’t help this time. The solution to this vintage puzzle relies on some interesting physics concerning granular convection.
Solution: orient the tube vertical and shake it, and the steel ball will rise to the top due to the Brazil nut effect in about 25 shakes. The most likely mechanism here is that when the ball and sand are being shaken, every time the ball moves up the smaller sand grains (moving faster and pulled by gravity) will fill in the void under the ball, and so with each shake the ball moves upward.
Watch full video :
https://youtu.be/U2j1cevikPw