Kinetic Sand

[paulsutton]

Hi

I am involved with a local STEM café and discovery centre,   in Torbay.   We have a unit thing, that consists of a container to hold sand, this is connected to an upright and a xbox kinect, and a screen, the idea is that you fill the container with sand, and the kinect can scan the contours of the sand and display this on the screen.

Rather than using play sand,  the proprietor wants to use Kinetic sand, as this is expensive to buy as we need about 200kg (container is quite large)  he would like to try and make some.  I have looked up some instructions to make this, but many of the instructions seem to use perishable food products such as corn starch.  We don't want to be buying more play sand down the line to make more due to the food based ingredients going mouldy or similar.

Apparently it is possible to make with silicone oil (I assume in place of olive oil or similar) however I have tried and failed to find any instructions for this.  I tried to do a search kinetic sand and silicone oil, and ended up with instruction using olive oil. 

Just wondered if anyone had any ideas please, or where I can perhaps find some actual instructions.   I think silicone oil is some sort of lubricating oil, not sure.

Thanks

Paul

Ps the same unit also has various games built in that can be projected on the surface, so when we just had various objects in the container, the projected sprites could move around but also sort of avoid the objects placed in the container,   I think it needed more calibration but we were just testing it at that point.

I am aware that normal bought kinetic sand is non-toxic and using the oil may not meet this, however children using this will be under supervision, so it should be safe to use in that respect.