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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
43 comments
It starts on the 9th page here
https://gwern.net/doc/technology/1996-mcphee.pdf
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
https://cbselementary.fandom.com/wiki/Sand_Trap#Plot
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.
Cool website though.
(Also, in many U.S. parks, it's illegal to take rocks, sticks, or other natural material.)
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.
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...
It seemed far fetched then, but after seeing these pictures it really makes sense.
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 learned that local sand composition is very affected by local geology.
These pictures would make great wallpapers.
> and roughly 700,000,000,000 cubic meters of beach on Earth.
I wonder how they determine the average depth of beach sand?