Explore the Hidden World of Sand

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

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

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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’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 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.

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

These pictures would make great wallpapers.

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.

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

No sand from Brazil with such a huge coastline?

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

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.