Here’s how it works: A computer pipes satellite imagery through a projector onto a tabletop sandbox (no really, an actual sandbox). Color-coded areas show where to move the sand (with your hands) to quickly create hills, mountain peaks and valleys. By the time you’re finished, you have a box with astonishingly accurate contours, overlaid by a topographical digital image that makes the whole thing look almost holographic.
[Update: TIME magazine selected a different holographic sandbox for its “50 Best Inventions” list, but since we intended to highlight “holographic mapping” as a general category, we chose the product we’d previously written about, which is why it appears here but not in the full list.]
Read more: How a Common Sandbox Is Battling Arizona’s Wallow Fire