FreeShip- China Sand, White, Natural, 120 mesh- (Prompt rebate on orders with 3 or more FreeShip items!)

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Preface: What is silica and silica sand? Is this silica sand? The answer is not quite (read on). Pure natural silica sand is 100% silicon dioxide, SiO2. It's also called Pure Quartz. Naturally occurring, close to pure quartz is crystalline (in the actual world "pure" is 99.0% to 99.9% pure). It is white or transparent depending on "fluid inclusions" (white quartz). It will be off-white when less than "pure". But wait! Although the assertion that pure quartz is crystalline is correct, it's also correct that pure quartz can be amorphous (non-crystalline). The keyword is "natural". Natural quartz is always crystalline.

We carry some pure silica that's a refractory made in an electric arc furnace that is melted crystalline quartz (quartz needs very high temps to melt) which changes it into amorphous silica (a man-made amorphous quartz, also called "quartz glass"). It's broken up into grain or powder and called "Fused Silica". It is used as a refractory material or remelted and made into pure transparent quartz slabs which are ground and polished, making transparent quartz windows.
This is called "Sierra White China Sand", 120 mesh. It's a natural phenomenon that as a mineral is ground finer, the powder appears whiter. The coarser versions come closer to showing what the true color is. We mentioned above that this was not quite a silica sand. It's similar, but it's not 95% silicon dioxide, it has some impurities, more than the usual silica sands have, so it loses on a technicality.
DigitalFire has an analysis of china sand (but no description). The analysis speaks for itself, though. If the china sand listed on DigitalFire is the same as this white china sand, then china sand is fairly impure silica sand. It's an unusual sand whose impurities are not darker colored like most impure sands would be, but instead they are close to white. It has 75% silicon dioxide. The other main component is white aluminum oxide (Al2O3). Those 2 components make it still the same high melt sand as silica sand . What it's advantages might be, if any, I don't know. Perhaps the lesser silica content would make it "fit" with a clay better when used as a grog in a ^10 porcelain? Less silica, less quartz inversion (expanding/contracting)?
My ceramics knowledge is not very chemically pure, it comes from having 3 kilns in the last 30 years (2 electric, one gas). I mostly played with small solid porcelain sculptures to try to find a process/material(s) to allow them to fire successfully in larger and larger solid clay sizes. Ceramic sculpture "Rocks". I used prepared clays and preferred the whiteness of porcelain. I never used glazes, and I preferred the working properties of low grog wet clay, which made finding a way to make the ceramic rocks larger that much harder. I experimented a lot with spodumene in the clay body (and other niche materials) and I ramped up and ramped down slowly and long (especially before, during, and after 573 C).

If you cast your Sand net wider you'll get "feldspathic sand", "brown sand", "construction sand" and "concrete sand" (among others), all impure lower sands that contain less silica and are almost always darker or off colored (not white or off-white). Technically silica sand must contain a minimum of 95% silicon dioxide (aka silica, SiO2). Concrete sand must contain 80% Silica. A good site { https://shawresources.ca/what-is-silica-sand/#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20silica%20sand%20is%20made,of%20silicon%20dioxide%20(SiO2).&text=The%20colour%20of%20each%20sand,less%20than%200.6%25%20iron%20oxide } discusses silica sand and its uses.
Wikipedia doesn't have a silica sand article. They have a disambiguation page for sand in general (it is a huge topic). Sand is either a finely divided rock or a large list of people, places, films, music, literature.
Choosing the Sand topic, the finely divided rock, and searching on "silica sand", the Sand topic barely mentions silica sand as a phrase. Disappointing. But I do give them credit for stating "the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal settings is silica" (silicon dioxide, or SiO2).

I read a brief passage that mentioned a clay called china sand clay. Thinking it might have china sand and china clay (the Western version of course being silica sand and kaolin!). Dead end. I also saw a post in ceramicartsdaily asking what is China sand. One post thought it might reference the famous Zisha clay from Yixing. Being not famous to me, I found out it has a high percentage of iron oxide, it's a quite dark clay.

To sum up, White China Sand is unusual for its relatively low silica content in combination with being white. Whether that's of practical value remains to be seen. I'll try to find out when I get my new small "retirement" kiln finally hooked up. It's a small one, a true ^10 "test" kiln which I'm hoping will be very very controllable with its small size and up-to-date controller. I still want to see how big I can make solid porcelain. Paper Clay??