Explore the Hidden World of Sand | Hacker News Reader

Explore the Hidden World of Sand

magnifiedsand.com

286 pointsRAAx70743 comments

John McPhee had a great New Yorker article (which I think was also in the collection Irons in the Fire), where he wrote about how U.S. geologists used sand found in the Japanese "Fu-Go" bombs that made it to the NW US to figure out their launch sites from specific beaches near Tokyo.

It starts on the 9th page here

https://gwern.net/doc/technology/1996-mcphee.pdf

Since sand is a non-renewable resource that is needed for construction, there’s a lot of illegal activity going on.

In India, illegal sand mining is the country's largest organized criminal activity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_theft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_sand_trade

This was part of the plot of an Elementary (modern-day Sherlock Holmes in NYC with Jonny Lee Miller & Lucy Liu) episode called Sand Trap.

https://cbselementary.fandom.com/wiki/Sand_Trap#Plot

Importing construction sand was a plot in the HBO series Barry as well.

Just our luck that desert sand doesn’t work for this because we have essentially endless amounts of it. Instead people are destroying pristine river banks.

I think the rotating photos create a poor UX. The purpose of this layout it seems is to let users view the images carefully and study the details, but the slideshow effect makes that difficult.

From a casual browsing perspective, I liked it. However, it'd be nice to have it pause when you hover over one - or something like that. To get the best of both worlds.

I mean if your intent is to view the images carefully and study the details why not click through to the details page and see larger, more detailed photos?

Because I'd like to look at the image I'm looking at at the moment I'm looking at it.

I found the page frustrating and overwhelming and had to close it.

Love this!

I've heard that desert sand is fundamentally smoother than beach or river sand. Would love to see some examples of non-beach sand side-by-side with these glorious samples.

https://sandatlas.org/desert-sand/

Ask and ye shall receive.

I would also like to see what happens if various types of sand are heated to various temperatures.

FYI, in many countries and U.S. states, it's illegal to take sand from a beach.

Cool website though.

(Also, in many U.S. parks, it's illegal to take rocks, sticks, or other natural material.)

But is it legal to take a microscope to the beach?

Not that I am aware of. I wouldn't suggest doing that in North Korea though (or possessing any type of scientific or other measuring instrument there).

The website shows pictures of the sand collection and the microscope. It does not appear to be at a beach.

That's a tad pedantic. Everyone takes sand from the beach. That's simply the nature of going to a beach. The spirit of those laws is to prevent people from taking large quantities of sand for some personal or commercial purpose.

You may think it is pedantic, but it's not dissimilar to those that think "no cop, no stop" is valid. Just because you didn't get caught doesn't mean it's not violating the regulations.

The spirit of the law is not "large quantities", it's to get people used to the idea of letting nature be and not taking something just because you want to. If you come across a rock that you think is interesting and keep it for yourself, you're denying the next person to discover it on their trip. If you take a rock or two or maybe three, then so does the next person, and the next, well, you get how math works. So since people can't be trusted to not take, there exists an official policy that says you can't.

I think you partially misunderstood the previous comment. The "that's simply the nature of going to a beach" line refers to how, when you get home, you'll find your sandals, swimsuit, etc. covered in little grains of sand. But any police officer who tried to charge someone with taking sand from the beach because they sat down on the beach and some grains of sand clung to their clothing... would be completely overstepping the intent of the law (and would get severely reprimanded by any sane judge who got handed the case, just prior to said judge dismissing the case with prejudice).

Now, scooping up a handful of sand and sticking it in a vial would be against the law in many places, though I imagine a researcher asking for permission would probably be granted permission in most of those places.

I doubt a researcher would ask for permission for single vial and I rather doubt anyone has ever been prosecuted for that. At least in any sane jurisdiction. The problem is people who think "since I'm stopping by that river tomorrow anyway why don't I pack a tarp and shovel and save purchasing sand from the hardware store for my new patio".

I'm not sure what the situation is for rocks but given a relatively unpopulated beach if I see a neat agate or other mineral I'm definitely taking it with me. If everyone did the same the environment wouldn't be any worse off.

I believe kickopotomus just meant that whenever you go to the beach, and later return, you inevitably have some sand in your shoes, socks, b-crack, pants, etc... in this context your statement reads bizarre as if people are guilty of crimes just because some irritating sand decides to hitchhike in your socks...

Maybe with sand but you’re not even allowed to take sticks or even small rocks out of parks because if a 100 million took out just one every year it would have a significant impact.

It would be nice if they included zoomed out pictures as well, is hard to tell what the beaches look like in person from the magnified sand.

If you click into one of the examples they have a photo of a hand holding a sample plus photos of the beach.

Well, here's a video which ends with a hand holding a sample.[1] It's a sand-making plant. Big rocks go in, and repeated crushing makes them into sand-sized rocks.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVBiRPkQ0MI

I always wondered how many of the translucent stones were actually worn down shards of beer bottles.

I love this page. What the internet was made for. I sometimes wish they had closed down development after creating this page and the page with detailed information about Star Trek TNG episodes.

This is lovely. I'd hoped to see The Coral Beach on the Isle of Skye[1] featured. In retrospect the bits are maybe a bit large[2] to be called "sand".

I'm sure it's very much frowned upon these days but somewhere I have a 35mm film canister full of the coral fragments.

[1] https://www.isleofskye.com/skye-guide/top-ten-skye-walks/cor... [2] https://www.isleofskye.com/skye-guide/top-ten-skye-walks/cor...

I remember reading about a case where a murderer was tied to the crime scene just by analysing the quality of soil on his shoes.

It seemed far fetched then, but after seeing these pictures it really makes sense.

I’ve had a sand collection for many years. I keep small vials on my shelf. From the Namib desert, to the slope of Mt Fuji, to Alaskan tundra. It’s a fun way to catalog places I’ve been.

I wish there existed a cheap sorting machine that could sort or arrange these grains by color

I love this site - it has been listed before, quite a while back, I seem to remember.

Seeing it again, with how powerful phones are and what good macro cameras they often have now, identifying sand seems like it would be a fun ML + mobile app project.

I come from a island where its common to pain with sand. About one hundred beach, around two hundred colors, green is hard to make.

I learned that local sand composition is very affected by local geology.

I mean it makes sense that the sand is made of the same stuff as your local rocks, that's where it came from. Sure it washes around a bit in the surf but it's not like it's floating around the world on the ocean currents, at least not in massive quantities. I'm sure there are bits stuck in driftwood or whatnot but the vast majority should sink to the bottom.

It gets even better putting the sand from the shoreline with water under a microscope. Lots of little things moving around.

No sand from Brazil with such a huge coastline?

Only one from Mexico, definitely need more.

I'm sure they'd be more than happy to use any samples you might want to go to the expense of acquiring and sending to them.

This is just amazing to look at. Incredible, that there are shells as little as grains of sand.

These pictures would make great wallpapers.

This is fantastic! Excellent share. Though I object vigorously to its exclusion of any beach in California. Scandalous!

> and roughly 700,000,000,000 cubic meters of beach on Earth.

I wonder how they determine the average depth of beach sand?

I imagine you’d go digging on a few sample beaches and then make an assumption about how representative those beaches are.

Think where we’d be without sand!

Very neat, never thought about how different beaches are. Like the sites theme, easy to read as well.

I learned recently that white sand is mostly parrotfish poop... they eat coral and then it becomes sand

This is quality content! A peek into the real wonders of the world and not the usual opinionated slop we are getting way too used to.

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