Veritasium: What happens if you throw sand into a jet engine?

In this Veritasium episode, Derek Muller unpacks how jet engines actually work—from sucking in air and compressing it, to igniting fuel and spewing out thrust—while explaining why they don’t just melt under insanely hot conditions. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes tour of Rolls-Royce’s precision casting facility and a primer on edge dislocations, nickel-based superalloys (hello, gamma-prime!), and the crystal structures that let turbine blades survive 1,700 °C+.

But here’s the fun part: what happens if you toss sand into that roaring beast? Sand blast tests show how ingested grit and volcanic ash can erode or embed in those fancy single-crystal blades and ceramic coatings, leading to pitting, stress concentrations, and the need for careful inspections and maintenance. It’s a real-world stress test that proves why material science is absolutely crucial to keeping planes flying safely.

Watch on YouTube