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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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...

No sand from Brazil with such a huge coastline?