Note: Only some types of sand from some places have an interesting appearance microscopically. Most sand will just look like little rocks. Or at least that iirc from the last time this image was circulating.
Oops, indeed, updated title from “Sand is beautiful under a microscope” since that wasn’t totally accurate. “Oops” because I had in fact suspected as much!
Ah, the classic COVID-sand in the fourth picture.
Is this real? I feel like some of the details on these things in the pictures look very macro. Like the colored striations on the shell pieces. Super cool if it is, but I’m not so sure…
Well, here’s a video from Dr. Greenberg where you can see them more 3D (Piped link)
Wow so cool! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a microscope get angled like that while looking, either. Very surreal effect. Thanks for the link!
Keyword is some, most sand will just look like small chunks of granite.
i wonder if there are any hidden gems in sand… and by gem i mean information… unknown organisms, unknown fossil formation types.
could we someday feed sand into a sufficiently capable machine to identify novel particles? any value there?
Reached out to the photographer!
Uh what? I mean we can get geochemistry and look for trace elements.
Paleontologists will absolutely look for fossils in sand, they do it all the time. I just sent off a bunch of sand and clay for pollen analysis and I’m not sure how they process it but I know it involves dissolving inorganic material in acid sometimes.
Most of the time no one looks at sand in bulk. It’s…you can imagine, a daunting task. Sometimes people (individuals) will look at sand for some diagnostic purposes - usually in my line of work to note the type and abundance of minerals present, or especially the distribution of particle size and clay/silt content. I know other fields will survey things like diatoms and foraminifera for paleontology but also for I think oil exploration because indicator fossils are important but I don’t do that so I’m not really sure I can speak more to it.
A lot of time people look at sand in the field with a hand lens or drag it back to the lab to look at it with a basic microscope. Or slap it in epoxy and make a thin section. Sending it off for geochemistry is…possible but may not be especially illuminating depending on what you’re trying to learn. People can also date the sand using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to get a date of when the sand was last exposed to sunlight (and thus, deposited) if the sand is in the right age bracket (<150ka ish).
Rarely people get more involved with things like XRD/XRF, SEM, microprobe uh… something else, I’m sure. That’s more of a straight academia realm though.
I went off on a tangent but people slap sand in machines and other things to find out stuff all the time.
