I would have loved it if you showed pictures of what these sand grains looked like under a microscope. Not trying to be critical, it was another video jam packed with information. I will need to watch again to make sure I take in everything. It is 4am here but I watch as soon as I see you have uploaded anything. Once again, your genuine interest is infectious.
I was quite amazed the first time I went to Hawaii...the island of Oahu. Knowing that the rocks are all basalt, I was curious about why the sand there was tan in colour. Sitting on the beach, looking at the sand up close, it was obvious that it was mostly made up of crushed shells and coral. I looked at the amount of sand on the beaches and thought....this took a very long time to make.
Thank you very much. I am a lifelong O'ahu resident. It was not until middle school that I learned about the sand's relationship to the parrotifsh. For the next few weeks, when I stepped on the sand, I said, "Ewwww." 😜
We have bands of magnetic iron sand and singing sand on lake michigan. When the waves pile the sand just right it can get pretty loud if you drag your feet
Nice video again, here in New Zealand we have some black sand beaches with so much magnetite (about 57%) that we mine them to make steel and they're far too hot in summer to walk bare foot on. We also have pumice sand which is great for landscaping and sandpits as it's very course and drains very well but it also floats on water Cheers Noel
You do such a good job explaining things. I am not sure everybody is as fascinated about things such as clay, and sand, as are your followers. But I enjoy you stuff!
Thank you so much! I am glad you enjoy it! haha I feel like before I make a video about a topic, such as clay or sand, I think to myself, "really? this is what they want to see?" but then I research and find out such cool things until I am also super excited about it! lol it's a crazy cycle hahah, I love learning these things about the world, it is certainly a worth while use of my time :)
This is the video I've been waiting for! I grew up on an island in the tropics and always took it for granted that 'sand' meant coral fragments. That is, until one of my instructors mentioned that we had to use imported sand for an experiment since it is silicate sand and non-reactive, unlike local carbonate sand. When I realised that 'sand' normally referred to quartz from eroded granite, I felt like i had to reassess my core beliefs lol. Little by little, I'm accepting the reality of sand diversity the more I'm able to learn about the topic
Oh yea of little faith; sand is many varied , complex compound and sometimes even pure , it is snot to bee triffeled with ! Best perhaps to simply forget sand an take up concrete ,cement ,and it's assorted additives...
As a child I visited the Isle of Wight off the coast of southern England one area called Alum Bay has a large sandy slopes and cliffs made of multicoloured bands of sand, pale, yellow, light, mid and dark browns, various reddish hues , all in striated layers. It’s a tourist attraction because of it. I recall collecting samples from the different colored bands
Oh I remember the first time I saw a microscope veiw of beach and my mind is still blown to this day. Fascinating lesson to help me know more about this. I have long dreamed about going to a white sand beach. The more sand I see though, especially with you describing it, makes me wonder what they taste like. lol Thanks friend!
For black sand beaches, and other fantastic geology generally, you'd probably love a visit to NZ. Especially the North Island. Piha and Murawai beaches are black sand, and just north of Auckland. I grew up in Auckland, and for a while regularly travelled by car down to Wellington, and there's a geologically awesome postcard around every corner in the road.
I saw a dissection/butchery video of a parrotfish and their multiple sets of teeth were surprising. In the back of the mouth there is one huge flat grooved tooth that rubs against another on the roof of their mouth, to grind the coral. Very cool!
A lot of the granitic mountains here have streams of “black sands” that are usually composed of iron and Muscovite. Old prospectors used to assay those sands for their precious metal contents.
You've been wanting to make a sands video for a long time; now I know why! I find the interaction between life and non-life geology interesting. Not that i didn't know lizards bury themselves in sand, but I find the adaptations of Lizard's in the desert dunes and such . . . kind of romantic! They way they bop up and down off the sand; or, they switch feet periodically. Or, they burrow underneath the sand. Then there's the Paret fish!
The silicon valley making computer chips was the first thing I thought of when thinking of technological use. But, you found a lot of uses of sand! There's a great video called Microworld, narrated by William Shatner that mentions the computer chips comes from sand!
I lived in White Sands Missle Range around 10-ish; i think I went to White Sands once(maybe trice!) My father, being a sputnik kid and Astronomy buff, never thought to even take me to Trinity site in like three to four yeasrs of living in New Mexico!
Olivine sand-well, that's a brand new concept! I have read that the ocean currents tend to focus floating stuff on Henderson Island, but I suspect that the fact that there's nobody there to clean up the stuff probably exacerbates the trash accumulation there. Could be generations worth of junk there, ugh.
Talking of foram sand, a unique thing is found in the beach in Okinawa, Japan, known as "star sand". Take a look at it! It's lovely! (Tried to paste an image, .. failed. Sorry.) Stepping on it in the beach, you can hear a unique sound/noise!
23:00 🐟❤those two fish. That's actually funny and beautiful. Little creatures taking the smallest fragments from the depths of Earth to design symbols of beauty and love.
Great video!!!! Very informative. One use of sand you didn't mention is for sandcasting metals (making green sand molds) and making sand cores (which are placed within metal castings to create voids).
I think you hit it all. I'm guessing the next most common form of sands not mentioned here are rutile and ilmenite sands. They don't get much discussion because there isn't a geologic process to sort them apart from quartz sand.
Fellow New Mexican! Yay 🙌 Also, I'm not 100% sure, but there is green sand just north of Moad, UT. It might be from olivine deposits. Depending on what part of the state you're in, it could be a weekend trip. Regardless, I highly suggest a trip or two to Utah for geology nerds! I geek out everytime I go there
Have you ever heard of a book called "The Earth After Us" ( by geologist Jan Zalacewicz)? It's a speculation on the prospects of human activity showing up in the geological record hundreds of millions of years in the future. He talks a lot about how sand forms and how "human sand" can form from all the stuff we use for construction (concrete, asphalt, bricks, etc).
Once upon a time I worked at a business that did water filtration systems for homeowners. There was a setup we would put together for people with iron in their well water. The filtration media was called “green sand” and was considerably heavier than silica sand. Although it was called green sand it looked almost black in color. Potassium permanganate was used to clean the filter media. Does this sound like it is olivine sand or some other substance?
Greensand used in water filters is usually glaucophane and other clays that naturally attract iron and other metal molecules and remove them from the water as it passes through the filter. Glaucophane greensands are also great organic additives to thick black clayey soil to provide nutrients and loosen up the texture in gardens.
9:40 Personal experience: I've walked on black sand beaches (often and for long periods), and it certainly does feel like it's burning your feet. It's really not, but I guess that depends on your definition of burning with regards to skin. The sand does not get hot enough to cause cell lysis as would happen with steam, fire, or more than momentary exposure to boiling water. That's what I think of as burning. Of course, if that's the definition of burning, then you can't be burnt by the sun either (sunburn is an immune reaction triggered in part by DNA damage from UV, hence the association with cancer). What most consider burning has to do with the skin's physical reaction to the heat: blisters (aka desquamation, the break down of attachment between layers of skin). This is an immune reaction, caused by cell signaling. When exposed to certain levels of heat, skin cells will secrete chemicals that attract inflammatory cells, who then secrete other chemicals that cause the formation of blisters. The level of heat that will case this chain of events is highly variable: I never got blisters, and my brain eventually figured out that my feet weren't really getting burnt, and it didn't hurt (the locals were very impressed). My Significant Other did get blisters, and from only a few moments on the sand.
Thanks for your videos! I'm a math-heavy geophysicist, so I'm using your videos to catch up on the geology . Anyway, a few years ago I was in Chile for an intern close to Valparaiso and I remember the sand on the beach close to my workplace at the mouth of a river was black with green kind of stripes, I assume it is volcanic basalt with some olivine, but I never checked.
Since erosion is the driver of sand creation what is the feedback that stops it? How come we don't see many silt beaches? Does it just get washed away?
Actually in a way yes, it is graded along the shoreline (meaning: it is sorted or ordered by grain size by depth along the shoreline). The waves sort the grains such that sand sized grains stay on the beach and the upper to middle shoreface zone, while silt and mud sized sediment is further down in the lower (deeper) shoreface zone along the continental shelf. This sorting occurs because the grain size controls how easy or hard it is for the water to transport that grain. There is a direct relationship with velocity of transport media (water or wind) and grain size in terms of how far a particular grain size will be transported in a media going a particular velocity. Each grain size has a particular velocity of water or wind movement that defines it's deposition, meaning once a wave reaches a low enough velocity, sand size grains will be deposited because they can no longer be supported in suspension (or carried by the water), whereas smaller silt sized grains are still being transported at that wave velocity, thus, the waves deposit them elsewhere, in this case further down the shoreline. However, I should mention that this trend can also go the other direction, meaning shoreward, such that the lagoon or estuary type region that is further inland from the 'beach' or breaker zone is often silt and mud rich while the breaker zone (right where the waves break) is sand-rich, and then it goes back to finer grains as you go deeper again. Anyway, the answer to your question is yes, there are other sizes, but they get transported elsewhere. Hope that helps ;)
This video instantly reminded me of White Sands NM. So glad you talked about it in the video, I’ve visited it countless times. How did you like your last visit?
@@GEOGIRL Yeah same here, I never get tired of visiting. Last time I visited was last Easter. Its so much fun sliding down the dunes but I really love to do is admire its prehistoric past, staring out into the distance as far as the eye can see and imagine all of the great Ice Age Mega-Beasts that used to roam this land, leaving their tracks behind to be discovered thousands of years later. Did you see the giant ground sloth tracks exhibit if you went inside the visitor center?
Your videos are very educational and informative. Although it's a mere technicality, I wanted to point out that engineers consider sand grains to be those for which the smallest dimension is between 0.075 mm and 4.75 mm.
So post comment; Wow learned a lot! Olivine sand are you kidding me? WOW! That will be a #2 goal after I see white sands! Siesta Key I think was the closest one to me in Ohio, I have long dreamed of going down there! *** edited this out, I saw after rewatching. So you said white sands national park. I didn't know where that was as I had my eyes closed I didn't see the slide said NM! Ok yeah I thought you said something about Texas before. That place looks/sounds amazing! I also remember what you said about olivine, that it is usually too fragile to form a large beach. I had more looks at them, so I guess it would be a big deep vein where they could be squeezed up from underground? Tums out Florida doesn't even have a top 10 white sand beach! New Mexico looks like a dream! I had some friends move down there so I always get to see it from some unique angles. Ok well thanks again, killer work here!
Been on several types of beaches when I was in the Navy. Volcanic beaches was weird to me by the feel and sun heat. In Indiana we have a lot of garnet sand (with the black magnet sand)...does the garnet sand have a name? The garnets were deposited by glaciers. Thank you for the class
I live in Las Cruces and I remember the first time I visited White Sands. It was a cool 74 F degree day and walking on the sand I was surprised at how the reflected heat from the sand made it really hot. I felt the sand and it was actually pretty cool and damp even. It reminded me of hiking across snow in July that was so thick it hadn't melted, but it didn't reflect heat as efficiently as that gypsum did and it was warmer than when I visited White Sands. I now go out there in the Winter on sunny days and walk around. Bring sunglasses, more than a few people have had sunburned eyes from being on the sand especially kids who often don't wear them. It doesn't take long either. White Sands is the only national park that gets closed for missile tests as it sits in the middle of White Sands Missile Range. I remember US Route 70 being closed for over an hour one morning. 😄
FYI, the trip along the road to Hana is really cool, but if you get motion sickness, you might have trouble because it's extremely windy so if someone drives on it quickly... 🤣
Yay! White Sands NP! I'm in LC and visit as often as I can. Where else can you dig down into the top of a dune and reach water? Locals have told me of burying kegs in the sand to keep the beer cold. 🍻 😂 So... because gypsum is soluble and the sand is formed by evaporation, is it really "sand"? To me, it's a cousin of salt. Also soluble which forms through evaporation, and can create _huge_ flats (think Bolivia). A backup landing site for the Space Shuttle was the flats at the White Sands Test Facility to the west of Holloman AFB. It was only used that way once, if memory serves me correctly. The more time I spend at the park, the more amazed I am. Your thoughts?
If you ever want to visit white AND black beaches in one trip, go to Bali. The south side of the island has white beaches, whereas the north side has black ones.
@@GEOGIRL I can't believe I missed the green beach in Norway. I drove along the coast to Alesund 4 years ago, and returned to Oslo through Trollstigen road (where I saw moraine sand and eternal ice), and then through the Otta valley, where the river's water is cyan blue. Going to that green sand beach would have been an easy day trip. Maybe a good video would be to explain why some lakes and rivers have peculiar colors due to their chemistry.
@@GEOGIRL Actually you CAN see small patches of olivine (peridote) sand very close to you in New Mexico (of course, such cool geology in NM) at Kilbourne Hole (Volcanic Crater).
Sand is also an excellent growing medium. Everyone knows plant roots need water, but many don't know roots also need air. Plants grown in sandy soil are able to get needed oxygen because sand is so permeable. Air easily passes between the sand particles and down to the roots. A farmer's favorite soil is Sandy Loam. When planting my fruit trees in the ground, I always add a large bag of sand to the back fill, never any compost, "planter mix " nor any organic material. All my potted plants from fruit trees and berry bushes to adeniums and roses are all planted in pure sand. I top dress fertilize them with an organic fertilizer. and put compost on the surface as a mulch. People mistakenly believe compost, planter mix, etc. contain nutrients. Check the label. See any N P K data? Nope! Those bags contain little more than ground up trees.
How do you do it without saying ‘er’ or ‘um’ at any point? Very impressive, it’s like you have an inbuilt teleprompter. I come for the geology but stay for the diction - well done.
HAHAHA It's called editing! I wish I never say um, but unfortunately, I have to admit I do sometimes, I just take it out after the fact ;) I will say, however, I have gotten better about that with practice. The more I give talks or teach lectures in person, the better I am about saying um less, so it just comes with practice ;)
Oh yes I do want to know about dune movement and beach depositions! Sand is right up there with clay for me. Non Newtonian liquids/solids fascinate me. Neither here nor there, not moving or still, a foot in both camps. There are secrets in sand I'm sure of it. Potential energy somehow right?
Has olivine been used as a semiprecious stone, Rachael? Also in regards to black sand New Zealand has a number beaches covered with it and it has highly levels of magnetite present so it is mined and smelted at the Glenbrook steel-mill ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Steel ), New Zealand pioneered the smelting of iron-sand in the 1950s. On another note, Rachel , in regards to granite you forgot to mention the third mineral that makes it up - Mica.
Please come and visit New Zealand, I'll take you to some of the coolest black-sand beaches! I use local black sand to demo magnetism in physics class, it works like iron filings :))
Let me add paver sand (or polymeric sand) to your list. It is sold at hardware stores next to play sand, and fill sand. It's not really sand, but a mix of sand and polymer (that will bind together and harden). It is used to hold brick patios together. --- I only bring this up because years ago I bought a bag of paver sand when I wanted (free flowing) fill sand. That was a mistake.
Oregon's rivers in general run through mountains made of basalt and are the major source of beach sand on our coast. But the beaches are very light in color. Well upstream I've found gray sand, which isn't surprising because the exterior of basalt river rock is gray, not black (though many of our beaches and estuaries are losing sand because the dams on the Columbia river keep it from getting to the coast!). So why does Oregon have very light-colored beaches when the state's primary rock is basalt?
Sand I love it. This is so cool. By the way, I have difficulty communicating because I had a stroke in Broca’s area, the part of the brain that controls speech. 2/8/2021 but I lived again. (My wife helped me compose this.)
I have to ask, since when did they start using beach sand in concrete? It has been many years, but I remember a neighbor in California had a crumbling foundation they ascertained was from concrete made from beach sand as the sodium chloride breaks down the calcium chloride in concrete and it begins crumbling. It is why there are sand pits all over the place. You find or found them in the San Gabriel alluvial plain up in Azusa and many other places. I remember them because they made a lake and same for the Santa Ana River out the other side of Anaheim, lots of sand, they made lakes for groundwater replacement.
I was turned off from black sand when I learned about pele's hair. Now I learn it can also burn your feet. Yikes! No bare feet or flip flops here. Maybe a hiking in boots, but definitely no relaxation at this beach for me 😬
OMG I actually hadn't heard of this until I read this comment and just googled it. Now I am obsessed and must make a future video! Thank you for the idea ;D
Me too, so cool....From Wikipedia: Singing sand, also called whistling sand or barking sand, is sand that produces sound. The sound emission may be caused by wind passing over dunes or by walking on the sand. Certain conditions have to come together to create singing sand: The sand grains have to be round and between 0.1 and 0.5 mm in diameter. The sand has to contain silica. The sand needs to be at a certain humidity. The most common frequency emitted seems to be close to 450 Hz.
You really busted my mind with the 20 cm foraminiferum. Having red about that critter "Arcevulina" before, what I kept in mind was 20 mm (obviously because of cognitive dissonance), which would be also pretty large for a single celled organism. So my first reaction was to research this again (the GEO GIRL must have made a mistake here). Now I'm just flubbergasted - the GEO GIRL was r i g h t !
Hahaha yes, they can get crazy big for their size! I was also just blown away by this! It reminds me of how blown away I was when I learn how much weight ants can hold for their size! (the equivalent of humans carrying 2,500 lbs with our jaw!!!) It's so cool that these super tiny organisms can do impressively large things! :D
Actually the answer is yes and no haha! There is a machine that sorts the grains by magnetism which will separate dark from light grains in sand that formed due to igneous rock erosion. The light, non-magnetic quartz and feldspar goes into one side of the machine and the dark magnetic grains like magnetite and other fe-rich minerals go into the other side of the machine purely based on where the magnet is, it's pretty cool to watch! But for other colors, like green olivine, pink or white carbonate, white gypsum, etc. I don't think there is a way to separate them. But if anybody else knows a way, please comment in this thread! Thanks! :D
@@GEOGIRL someone give me an Arduino an old fuel injector a couple of light sensors filters and LEDs and I'll build it... I'm literally living trapped on less than $1,000 a month with $850 rent + child support ..
Anyway the reason I wanted one is so I could sort out the minerals that fluoresce in UVA from the minerals fluoresce in UVC and use a rotating filter to make animations in 3d sand art.. simple ones like flame effects with hopping jellyfish... Sorting sand by hand to find rare minerals will take more than a lifetime.
Interesting about the biological sources of sand. Is there a grain of sand at the center of every supermassive black hole? Sand and diatomaceous earth is also used in swimming pool filtration, but the diatomaceous earth is more expensive.
our sand in the west especially the southwest is aolian sand quartz type with a thin coating of iron oxide on the outside giving the reddish color. The various cream or white layers in the same sand are because of reducing fluids that bleach out the iron into solution and concretions are formed from it redepositing the iron if exposed to oxygenated surface water. WHY cannot I take our reddish sand and bleach it white with vinegar or sulfuric acid??
I would have loved it if you showed pictures of what these sand grains looked like under a microscope. Not trying to be critical, it was another video jam packed with information. I will need to watch again to make sure I take in everything. It is 4am here but I watch as soon as I see you have uploaded anything.
Once again, your genuine interest is infectious.
I was quite amazed the first time I went to Hawaii...the island of Oahu. Knowing that the rocks are all basalt, I was curious about why the sand there was tan in colour. Sitting on the beach, looking at the sand up close, it was obvious that it was mostly made up of crushed shells and coral. I looked at the amount of sand on the beaches and thought....this took a very long time to make.
Thank you very much. I am a lifelong O'ahu resident. It was not until middle school that I learned about the sand's relationship to the parrotifsh. For the next few weeks, when I stepped on the sand, I said, "Ewwww." 😜
@@legendre007 😂😂lol that's hilarious!
We have bands of magnetic iron sand and singing sand on lake michigan. When the waves pile the sand just right it can get pretty loud if you drag your feet
Great job as always. Remember playing with magnetic sand from Durand-Eastman beach at about age four. Would love to do an iron smelt someday.
I’ve been binging videos of sand. Sand is soooooo interesting, and yet it’s everywhere and most people don’t give it a second thought.
Nice video again,
here in New Zealand we have some black sand beaches with so much magnetite (about 57%) that we mine them to make steel and they're far too hot in summer to walk bare foot on.
We also have pumice sand which is great for landscaping and sandpits as it's very course and drains very well but it also floats on water
Cheers
Noel
That’s what Jandals/flip-flops are for: to keep your soles from getting burnt on Auckland’s West Coast iron sand beaches
You do such a good job explaining things. I am not sure everybody is as fascinated about things such as clay, and sand, as are your followers. But I enjoy you stuff!
Thank you so much! I am glad you enjoy it! haha I feel like before I make a video about a topic, such as clay or sand, I think to myself, "really? this is what they want to see?" but then I research and find out such cool things until I am also super excited about it! lol it's a crazy cycle hahah, I love learning these things about the world, it is certainly a worth while use of my time :)
Don't you believe it. Everyone is secretly interested, they just don't know it yet lol
I never tire of GEO GIRL's videos. They're informative & entertaining.
Thank you! ;D
Same! 😍💖
This is the video I've been waiting for! I grew up on an island in the tropics and always took it for granted that 'sand' meant coral fragments. That is, until one of my instructors mentioned that we had to use imported sand for an experiment since it is silicate sand and non-reactive, unlike local carbonate sand. When I realised that 'sand' normally referred to quartz from eroded granite, I felt like i had to reassess my core beliefs lol. Little by little, I'm accepting the reality of sand diversity the more I'm able to learn about the topic
hahaha yes! I know what you mean about reassessing everything! I was so confused when I found out sand isn't describing what I thought it was lol!
Sand lives matter! 😂💖
Oh yea of little faith; sand is many varied , complex compound and sometimes even pure , it is snot to bee triffeled with ! Best perhaps to simply forget sand an take up concrete ,cement ,and it's assorted additives...
@@KerriEverlasting Hope OP incorporates this into her coral beliefs after acceptance of diversity.
@@KerriEverlasting matter matters to matter
-some chemist
“In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is a story of the earth.”
-Rachel Carson
As a child I visited the Isle of Wight off the coast of southern England one area called Alum Bay has a large sandy slopes and cliffs made of multicoloured bands of sand, pale, yellow, light, mid and dark browns, various reddish hues , all in striated layers. It’s a tourist attraction because of it. I recall collecting samples from the different colored bands
That sounds amazing! I watch a channel called Lyme Regis Fossil Coast which I think is in your hemisphere? So jelly 💖😍
@@KerriEverlasting yeah that’s further west and is called the Jurassic Coast it’s very rich in fossils.
Excellent video, thank you so much!!
Oh I remember the first time I saw a microscope veiw of beach and my mind is still blown to this day. Fascinating lesson to help me know more about this. I have long dreamed about going to a white sand beach. The more sand I see though, especially with you describing it, makes me wonder what they taste like. lol Thanks friend!
You’re talks are informative and well delivered. Thanks!
To hear that snow can be considered a sand -- is to link science and poetry. Thank you so much.
Isn't so cool! ;D
As a massive Geology nerd I just wanna say your content is amazing!
Thank you so much! I am so glad you enjoy my videos ;D
I never thought I'd enjoy spending 24 minutes listening to someone talk about sand but this was a really interesting video 😅
For black sand beaches, and other fantastic geology generally, you'd probably love a visit to NZ. Especially the North Island. Piha and Murawai beaches are black sand, and just north of Auckland. I grew up in Auckland, and for a while regularly travelled by car down to Wellington, and there's a geologically awesome postcard around every corner in the road.
EXCELLENT!!!
Thank you! So glad you enjoyed it ;)
Valuable information about Sand. Thanks Geo girl. I'm undergraduate Student at Geology Department.... I benefit a lot of this channel.
Yes! A geology student! We are rare these days, so glad to have you here ;) Best of luck with your degree! Thanks for supporting the channel :)
I'm a big fan of the garnet sand that a lot of Connecticut beaches have. Reddish sand is just nice.
Well that was fun. I like White Sands too. It's like you're in a very hot winter wonderland.
I saw a dissection/butchery video of a parrotfish and their multiple sets of teeth were surprising. In the back of the mouth there is one huge flat grooved tooth that rubs against another on the roof of their mouth, to grind the coral. Very cool!
Great video! Thanks for condensing all this awesome sand information into one place :)
Hmm. I never thought of snow as sand, but it makes good sense. Sandblasting is also a good use of sand.
A lot of the granitic mountains here have streams of “black sands” that are usually composed of iron and Muscovite.
Old prospectors used to assay those sands for their precious metal contents.
Ooohh Muscovite sand must be so beautiful and shiny!!! :D
You've been wanting to make a sands video for a long time; now I know why!
I find the interaction between life and non-life geology interesting. Not that i didn't know lizards bury themselves in sand, but I find the adaptations of Lizard's in the desert dunes and such . . . kind of romantic! They way they bop up and down off the sand; or, they switch feet periodically. Or, they burrow underneath the sand. Then there's the Paret fish!
The silicon valley making computer chips was the first thing I thought of when thinking of technological use. But, you found a lot of uses of sand! There's a great video called Microworld, narrated by William Shatner that mentions the computer chips comes from sand!
I lived in White Sands Missle Range around 10-ish; i think I went to White Sands once(maybe trice!) My father, being a sputnik kid and Astronomy buff, never thought to even take me to Trinity site in like three to four yeasrs of living in New Mexico!
God gifted geo girl excellent thank you
very interesting!
Sand is grand should be the title of this video 💖😂
excellent presentation, thank you..
Thanks Geo Girl for making these wonderful videos!
Thanks! So glad you enjoy them :D
The shells and teeth sand looked pretty cool up close. Thanks.
Yes, the foram shells are my absolute favorite, so pretty and intricate, I love them! ;D
Olivine sand-well, that's a brand new concept!
I have read that the ocean currents tend to focus floating stuff on Henderson Island, but I suspect that the fact that there's nobody there to clean up the stuff probably exacerbates the trash accumulation there. Could be generations worth of junk there, ugh.
I don’t know how I ended up here, but this is cool!
Talking of foram sand, a unique thing is found in the beach in Okinawa, Japan, known as "star sand". Take a look at it! It's lovely! (Tried to paste an image, .. failed. Sorry.) Stepping on it in the beach, you can hear a unique sound/noise!
23:00 🐟❤those two fish. That's actually funny and beautiful. Little creatures taking the smallest fragments from the depths of Earth to design symbols of beauty and love.
Alum Bay at the Western end of the Isle of Wight (near the Needles rocks) has cliffs with vertical colours which carry on down into the beach.
Good class. You were able to make sand interesting. Thank You, Geo Girl. 🌊
Haha good, I am glad you found it interesting! ;D
Great video!!!! Very informative. One use of sand you didn't mention is for sandcasting metals (making green sand molds) and making sand cores (which are placed within metal castings to create voids).
Oh yea, that's very important, thanks for mentioning that!
Thank you for yet another fascinating video, love your content
Thank you! So glad you enjoyed it ;D
I think you hit it all. I'm guessing the next most common form of sands not mentioned here are rutile and ilmenite sands. They don't get much discussion because there isn't a geologic process to sort them apart from quartz sand.
Fellow New Mexican!
Yay 🙌
Also, I'm not 100% sure, but there is green sand just north of Moad, UT. It might be from olivine deposits. Depending on what part of the state you're in, it could be a weekend trip. Regardless, I highly suggest a trip or two to Utah for geology nerds! I geek out everytime I go there
Nice content. By the way your shelf rocks.
Have you ever heard of a book called "The Earth After Us" ( by geologist Jan Zalacewicz)? It's a speculation on the prospects of human activity showing up in the geological record hundreds of millions of years in the future. He talks a lot about how sand forms and how "human sand" can form from all the stuff we use for construction (concrete, asphalt, bricks, etc).
I looove this channel!!!
Yayyy! Thank you! :D
Once upon a time I worked at a business that did water filtration systems for homeowners. There was a setup we would put together for people with iron in their well water. The filtration media was called “green sand” and was considerably heavier than silica sand. Although it was called green sand it looked almost black in color. Potassium permanganate was used to clean the filter media. Does this sound like it is olivine sand or some other substance?
Greensand used in water filters is usually glaucophane and other clays that naturally attract iron and other metal molecules and remove them from the water as it passes through the filter. Glaucophane greensands are also great organic additives to thick black clayey soil to provide nutrients and loosen up the texture in gardens.
From Geo Girl, we learn how sand is grand. 😊
Sand is grand! Yes lol😅😂
@@GEOGIRL ...and never bland.
9:40 Personal experience: I've walked on black sand beaches (often and for long periods), and it certainly does feel like it's burning your feet. It's really not, but I guess that depends on your definition of burning with regards to skin. The sand does not get hot enough to cause cell lysis as would happen with steam, fire, or more than momentary exposure to boiling water. That's what I think of as burning. Of course, if that's the definition of burning, then you can't be burnt by the sun either (sunburn is an immune reaction triggered in part by DNA damage from UV, hence the association with cancer).
What most consider burning has to do with the skin's physical reaction to the heat: blisters (aka desquamation, the break down of attachment between layers of skin). This is an immune reaction, caused by cell signaling. When exposed to certain levels of heat, skin cells will secrete chemicals that attract inflammatory cells, who then secrete other chemicals that cause the formation of blisters. The level of heat that will case this chain of events is highly variable: I never got blisters, and my brain eventually figured out that my feet weren't really getting burnt, and it didn't hurt (the locals were very impressed). My Significant Other did get blisters, and from only a few moments on the sand.
Thanks for your videos! I'm a math-heavy geophysicist, so I'm using your videos to catch up on the geology . Anyway, a few years ago I was in Chile for an intern close to Valparaiso and I remember the sand on the beach close to my workplace at the mouth of a river was black with green kind of stripes, I assume it is volcanic basalt with some olivine, but I never checked.
Since erosion is the driver of sand creation what is the feedback that stops it? How come we don't see many silt beaches? Does it just get washed away?
Actually in a way yes, it is graded along the shoreline (meaning: it is sorted or ordered by grain size by depth along the shoreline). The waves sort the grains such that sand sized grains stay on the beach and the upper to middle shoreface zone, while silt and mud sized sediment is further down in the lower (deeper) shoreface zone along the continental shelf. This sorting occurs because the grain size controls how easy or hard it is for the water to transport that grain. There is a direct relationship with velocity of transport media (water or wind) and grain size in terms of how far a particular grain size will be transported in a media going a particular velocity. Each grain size has a particular velocity of water or wind movement that defines it's deposition, meaning once a wave reaches a low enough velocity, sand size grains will be deposited because they can no longer be supported in suspension (or carried by the water), whereas smaller silt sized grains are still being transported at that wave velocity, thus, the waves deposit them elsewhere, in this case further down the shoreline. However, I should mention that this trend can also go the other direction, meaning shoreward, such that the lagoon or estuary type region that is further inland from the 'beach' or breaker zone is often silt and mud rich while the breaker zone (right where the waves break) is sand-rich, and then it goes back to finer grains as you go deeper again. Anyway, the answer to your question is yes, there are other sizes, but they get transported elsewhere. Hope that helps ;)
Just amazing...
Thank you! ;D
Love comin back to the sand video
This video instantly reminded me of White Sands NM. So glad you talked about it in the video, I’ve visited it countless times. How did you like your last visit?
It was so fun! I hadn't been in forever so it was great to go with the fam :) I wanna go back again already haha!
@@GEOGIRL Yeah same here, I never get tired of visiting. Last time I visited was last Easter. Its so much fun sliding down the dunes but I really love to do is admire its prehistoric past, staring out into the distance as far as the eye can see and imagine all of the great Ice Age Mega-Beasts that used to roam this land, leaving their tracks behind to be discovered thousands of years later. Did you see the giant ground sloth tracks exhibit if you went inside the visitor center?
@@GEOGIRL Hey my friend, it’s been quite some time!!! How have you been doing lately?
Your videos are very educational and informative. Although it's a mere technicality, I wanted to point out that engineers consider sand grains to be those for which the smallest dimension is between 0.075 mm and 4.75 mm.
So post comment; Wow learned a lot! Olivine sand are you kidding me? WOW! That will be a #2 goal after I see white sands! Siesta Key I think was the closest one to me in Ohio, I have long dreamed of going down there!
*** edited this out, I saw after rewatching. So you said white sands national park. I didn't know where that was as I had my eyes closed I didn't see the slide said NM! Ok yeah I thought you said something about Texas before. That place looks/sounds amazing!
I also remember what you said about olivine, that it is usually too fragile to form a large beach. I had more looks at them, so I guess it would be a big deep vein where they could be squeezed up from underground?
Tums out Florida doesn't even have a top 10 white sand beach! New Mexico looks like a dream! I had some friends move down there so I always get to see it from some unique angles.
Ok well thanks again, killer work here!
Been on several types of beaches when I was in the Navy. Volcanic beaches was weird to me by the feel and sun heat. In Indiana we have a lot of garnet sand (with the black magnet sand)...does the garnet sand have a name? The garnets were deposited by glaciers. Thank you for the class
Yea, from what I found it is creatively called "garnet sand" lol I wish it was better hahaha ;D
@@GEOGIRL great show thank you! 😊
I live in Las Cruces and I remember the first time I visited White Sands. It was a cool 74 F degree day and walking on the sand I was surprised at how the reflected heat from the sand made it really hot. I felt the sand and it was actually pretty cool and damp even. It reminded me of hiking across snow in July that was so thick it hadn't melted, but it didn't reflect heat as efficiently as that gypsum did and it was warmer than when I visited White Sands.
I now go out there in the Winter on sunny days and walk around. Bring sunglasses, more than a few people have had sunburned eyes from being on the sand especially kids who often don't wear them. It doesn't take long either.
White Sands is the only national park that gets closed for missile tests as it sits in the middle of White Sands Missile Range. I remember US Route 70 being closed for over an hour one morning. 😄
I've been to a black sand beach on Maui & it's really neat. And yes, hot underfoot. I believe it was along the road to Hana.
FYI, the trip along the road to Hana is really cool, but if you get motion sickness, you might have trouble because it's extremely windy so if someone drives on it quickly... 🤣
Yay! White Sands NP! I'm in LC and visit as often as I can. Where else can you dig down into the top of a dune and reach water? Locals have told me of burying kegs in the sand to keep the beer cold. 🍻 😂 So... because gypsum is soluble and the sand is formed by evaporation, is it really "sand"? To me, it's a cousin of salt. Also soluble which forms through evaporation, and can create _huge_ flats (think Bolivia). A backup landing site for the Space Shuttle was the flats at the White Sands Test Facility to the west of Holloman AFB. It was only used that way once, if memory serves me correctly. The more time I spend at the park, the more amazed I am. Your thoughts?
Finally! New Sand Lore dropped.
Nice.
Very informative wow!
If you ever want to visit white AND black beaches in one trip, go to Bali. The south side of the island has white beaches, whereas the north side has black ones.
So cool! It's on my bucket list!! ;D
Lake Superior has black sand beaches made from "stamp sand." Mine waste.
My new travel goal is to experience green sand!!
Me too!!! :D
@@GEOGIRL I can't believe I missed the green beach in Norway. I drove along the coast to Alesund 4 years ago, and returned to Oslo through Trollstigen road (where I saw moraine sand and eternal ice), and then through the Otta valley, where the river's water is cyan blue. Going to that green sand beach would have been an easy day trip.
Maybe a good video would be to explain why some lakes and rivers have peculiar colors due to their chemistry.
@@GEOGIRL Actually you CAN see small patches of olivine (peridote) sand very close to you in New Mexico (of course, such cool geology in NM) at Kilbourne Hole (Volcanic Crater).
@@barbaradurfee645 Yes, but it's not the same when there's no water! hahaha but I guess it's still good ;)
Sand is also an excellent growing medium. Everyone knows plant roots need water, but many don't know roots also need air. Plants grown in sandy soil are able to get needed oxygen because sand is so permeable. Air easily passes between the sand particles and down to the roots. A farmer's favorite soil is Sandy Loam.
When planting my fruit trees in the ground, I always add a large bag of sand to the back fill, never any compost, "planter mix " nor any organic material. All my potted plants from fruit trees and berry bushes to adeniums and roses are all planted in pure sand. I top dress fertilize them with an organic fertilizer. and put compost on the surface as a mulch. People mistakenly believe compost, planter mix, etc. contain nutrients. Check the label. See any N P K data? Nope! Those bags contain little more than ground up trees.
How do you do it without saying ‘er’ or ‘um’ at any point? Very impressive, it’s like you have an inbuilt teleprompter. I come for the geology but stay for the diction - well done.
HAHAHA It's called editing! I wish I never say um, but unfortunately, I have to admit I do sometimes, I just take it out after the fact ;) I will say, however, I have gotten better about that with practice. The more I give talks or teach lectures in person, the better I am about saying um less, so it just comes with practice ;)
Oh yes I do want to know about dune movement and beach depositions! Sand is right up there with clay for me. Non Newtonian liquids/solids fascinate me. Neither here nor there, not moving or still, a foot in both camps. There are secrets in sand I'm sure of it. Potential energy somehow right?
Has olivine been used as a semiprecious stone, Rachael? Also in regards to black sand New Zealand has a number beaches covered with it and it has highly levels of magnetite present so it is mined and smelted at the Glenbrook steel-mill ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Steel ), New Zealand pioneered the smelting of iron-sand in the 1950s.
On another note, Rachel , in regards to granite you forgot to mention the third mineral that makes it up - Mica.
Please come and visit New Zealand, I'll take you to some of the coolest black-sand beaches! I use local black sand to demo magnetism in physics class, it works like iron filings :))
Let me add paver sand (or polymeric sand) to your list. It is sold at hardware stores next to play sand, and fill sand. It's not really sand, but a mix of sand and polymer (that will bind together and harden). It is used to hold brick patios together. --- I only bring this up because years ago I bought a bag of paver sand when I wanted (free flowing) fill sand. That was a mistake.
Arenites. Wackes. Arkoses. Etc.
I know you teach. Are you on research gate? I am currently working on a paper diving out the Freda Sandstone.
Yep, I am on Research gate, here's my profile: www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachel-Phillips-19
Best of luck with your paper! :D
@@GEOGIRL thanks
Oregon's rivers in general run through mountains made of basalt and are the major source of beach sand on our coast. But the beaches are very light in color. Well upstream I've found gray sand, which isn't surprising because the exterior of basalt river rock is gray, not black (though many of our beaches and estuaries are losing sand because the dams on the Columbia river keep it from getting to the coast!). So why does Oregon have very light-colored beaches when the state's primary rock is basalt?
In parts of Britain we would probably have limestone eroding into sand. Is that a type of ooid sand? Or is the limestone simply dissolving instead?
Sand I love it. This is so cool. By the way, I have difficulty communicating because I had a stroke in Broca’s area, the part of the brain that controls speech. 2/8/2021 but I lived again. (My wife helped me compose this.)
Thank you! So glad you think sand is cool too ;D I didn't use to but now I realize it's incredible beauty and diversity ;D
I have to ask, since when did they start using beach sand in concrete? It has been many years, but I remember a neighbor in California had a crumbling foundation they ascertained was from concrete made from beach sand as the sodium chloride breaks down the calcium chloride in concrete and it begins crumbling. It is why there are sand pits all over the place. You find or found them in the San Gabriel alluvial plain up in Azusa and many other places. I remember them because they made a lake and same for the Santa Ana River out the other side of Anaheim, lots of sand, they made lakes for groundwater replacement.
Sand is just a grain size. Doesn't this mean that tablesalt could more accurately be described as sodium-sand?
Hahaha, I love that, I vote we all start calling salt 'sodium sand' instead, this must happen!
Yep. Sand has everything to do with grain size. Not composition.
The most prized, coveted soft fine white sand is made of WHAT?? haha omg that's hilarious 😂
I was turned off from black sand when I learned about pele's hair. Now I learn it can also burn your feet. Yikes! No bare feet or flip flops here. Maybe a hiking in boots, but definitely no relaxation at this beach for me 😬
No mention of the Sands of Time? 🤔😉
Hell yeah. Sand
I know it isn't different chemically, but how can you consider this complete without mentioning "Singing Sand"?
OMG I actually hadn't heard of this until I read this comment and just googled it. Now I am obsessed and must make a future video! Thank you for the idea ;D
Me too, so cool....From Wikipedia: Singing sand, also called whistling sand or barking sand, is sand that produces sound. The sound emission may be caused by wind passing over dunes or by walking on the sand.
Certain conditions have to come together to create singing sand:
The sand grains have to be round and between 0.1 and 0.5 mm in diameter.
The sand has to contain silica.
The sand needs to be at a certain humidity.
The most common frequency emitted seems to be close to 450 Hz.
Sandcastle worms are really cool. Do their structures show in fossil records?
😎
You really busted my mind with the 20 cm foraminiferum. Having red about that critter "Arcevulina" before, what I kept in mind was 20 mm (obviously because of cognitive dissonance), which would be also pretty large for a single celled organism. So my first reaction was to research this again (the GEO GIRL must have made a mistake here). Now I'm just flubbergasted - the GEO GIRL was r i g h t !
Hahaha yes, they can get crazy big for their size! I was also just blown away by this! It reminds me of how blown away I was when I learn how much weight ants can hold for their size! (the equivalent of humans carrying 2,500 lbs with our jaw!!!) It's so cool that these super tiny organisms can do impressively large things! :D
Does a machine exist for sorting sand by the color of each grain?
Actually the answer is yes and no haha! There is a machine that sorts the grains by magnetism which will separate dark from light grains in sand that formed due to igneous rock erosion. The light, non-magnetic quartz and feldspar goes into one side of the machine and the dark magnetic grains like magnetite and other fe-rich minerals go into the other side of the machine purely based on where the magnet is, it's pretty cool to watch! But for other colors, like green olivine, pink or white carbonate, white gypsum, etc. I don't think there is a way to separate them. But if anybody else knows a way, please comment in this thread! Thanks! :D
@@GEOGIRL someone give me an Arduino an old fuel injector a couple of light sensors filters and LEDs and I'll build it... I'm literally living trapped on less than $1,000 a month with $850 rent + child support ..
Anyway the reason I wanted one is so I could sort out the minerals that fluoresce in UVA from the minerals fluoresce in UVC and use a rotating filter to make animations in 3d sand art.. simple ones like flame effects with hopping jellyfish... Sorting sand by hand to find rare minerals will take more than a lifetime.
✨✨👏👏💓
Ouh a 25min boring geeky video on... SAND! Pff! ... Ill still watch the whole thing! :P Great video!
Hahaha thank you! Glad you liked it ;D
Oregon beaches are tan, but it has some isolated black beaches.
Humans have that puffer fish trait. The builders and the stealers.
Interesting about the biological sources of sand.
Is there a grain of sand at the center of every supermassive black hole?
Sand and diatomaceous earth is also used in swimming pool filtration, but the diatomaceous earth is more expensive.
our sand in the west especially the southwest is aolian sand quartz type with a thin coating of iron oxide on the outside giving the reddish color. The various cream or white layers in the same sand are because of reducing fluids that bleach out the iron into solution and concretions are formed from it redepositing the iron if exposed to oxygenated surface water. WHY cannot I take our reddish sand and bleach it white with vinegar or sulfuric acid??
Why does "ooid sand" make me think of Doctor Who. Scapa Flow does the same thing. It just sounds like a Doctor Who place name.
What is sand?
Baby don't quartz me,
Don't quartz me,
No more
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Io’s sand 😊
That's a topic for a whole 'nother day! ;)
Strange that I never thought about where sand comes from.
Has anybody mentioned yet that it's course, rough and irritating. And it gets everywhere? haha
There would be places where sandstone is being eroded back into sand. I wonder what kind of sand that typically is