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Why Sand is Cool
Sand is something that all of us are used to walking on, but have you ever looked closer? Millions of tiny unique sand particles are mesmerizing at the microscopic level. Sand is different on every beach depending on how rocky, wavy, or littered it is (4). On tropical islands, sand is white and powdery because it’s made up mostly of calcium carbonate from shells of corals and mollusks while on Wrightsville beach, where this picture was taken, the most common kind of sand is quartz, which were carried here from rivers. This quartz is not easily water soluble and is made up mostly of silicon dioxide (4). A beach in California, called “Glass Beach” used to be a dumping ground for a city impacted by an earthquake in 1906 (1). Over a hundred years later, the beach consists of tumbled, polished pieces of “sea glass.” It actually used to be common to dump trash in the ocean, and this trashed beach wasn’t cleaned up until the 90’s (1). If you look at sand with a 30x or 40x microscope or a really good camera, you can see that there are tiny pieces from bigger seashells, and different tumbled rocks in many different ways (2). With a 300x microscope, many beautiful images were collected of unique sand grains found from different places. Many bright colorful geometric shapes appear, some looking like small trilobites, and some looking like tiny cacti (3). Sand is also very important in the zonation of different organisms that live in the wet or dry sand.
(1)https://50roads.com/glass-beach-ca/
(2)https://www.google.com/amp/s/prhscience.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/sand-under-a-microscope/amp/?source=images
(3)www.earthlymission.com/sand-magnified-300-times-reveals-a-breathtaking-universe-2/
(4)https://www.livescience.com/34748-what-is-sand-beach-sand.html
Why Sand is Cool
Sand is something that all of us are used to walking on, but have you ever looked closer? Millions of tiny unique sand particles are mesmerizing at the microscopic level. Sand is different on every beach depending on how rocky, wavy, or littered it is (4). On tropical islands, sand is white and powdery because it’s made up mostly of calcium carbonate from shells of corals and mollusks while on Wrightsville beach, where this picture was taken, the most common kind of sand is quartz, which were carried here from rivers. This quartz is not easily water soluble and is made up mostly of silicon dioxide (4). A beach in California, called “Glass Beach” used to be a dumping ground for a city impacted by an earthquake in 1906 (1). Over a hundred years later, the beach consists of tumbled, polished pieces of “sea glass.” It actually used to be common to dump trash in the ocean, and this trashed beach wasn’t cleaned up until the 90’s (1). If you look at sand with a 30x or 40x microscope or a really good camera, you can see that there are tiny pieces from bigger seashells, and different tumbled rocks in many different ways (2). With a 300x microscope, many beautiful images were collected of unique sand grains found from different places. Many bright colorful geometric shapes appear, some looking like small trilobites, and some looking like tiny cacti (3). Sand is also very important in the zonation of different organisms that live in the wet or dry sand.
(1)https://50roads.com/glass-beach-ca/
(2)https://www.google.com/amp/s/prhscience.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/sand-under-a-microscope/amp/?source=images
(3)www.earthlymission.com/sand-magnified-300-times-reveals-a-breathtaking-universe-2/
(4)https://www.livescience.com/34748-what-is-sand-beach-sand.html