Yesterday I have received from a trade partner a series of nice sands from Austria, mostly areas around Salzburg and Tirol. The sands are from mountain and, as it was written on the bags, they contain a mixture of quartz, gneis, mica, feldspat and some other elements. The sand has a nice metalic shining under [...]

Last weekend we resumed our photography trials and got new results. The setup was slightly different because we have already been using the new Canon camera body. The lens was the same (EF 100 mm f/2.8 USM Macro) but coupled with a closeup adaptor (Marumi Achromat Macro 200). Since we used all the 21 MP [...]

Serpentine is a rock forming mineral found in many metamorphic and igneous rocks with chemical formula (Mg,Fe)3Si2O5(OH)4 and chemical name Magnesium Iron Silicate Hydroxide. The colour is mostly green and the crystals are translucent. In my Sand Atlas collection I have one sand with serpentine (no. 278) originating from Marine d’Albo on Corsica island in [...]

The sample (832) comes from the beach at Ustka, a Polish holiday resort at Baltic Sea. Probable composition: quartz, garnet and ilmenite, as Polish shorelines of Baltic Sea are known for deposits of sand enriched with heavy minerals such as zircon, garnet, magnetite, ilmenite, rutile, monazite.

Magnetite is a ferrimagnetic mineral known under the chemical name ferrous-feric oxide, having chemical formula Fe3O4. Magnetite is the most magnetic naturally occurring mineral on Earth being known since the ancient times. Magnetite is often found in beach sands with igneous and metamorphic origins. The sample above comes from Bali island, Indonesia (sample no. 1005 [...]

Sand grains occurr in different shapes and sizes according to mineral composition, age, transport mechanism and distance traveled. Old sands usually have a round shape due to repeated wheatering and action of external factors. If they are exposed to strong wind or tidal action, the roundness of the grains are more accentuated as for the [...]

Over the last weekend we had our first try in sand photomicrography. Since we don’t have (yet!) a microscope we had to use our our digital camera. To get as much sharpness as possible we decided to mount a fix micro lens (Canon EF 100 mm f/2.8 USM) on the Canon 350D SLR body. Additional [...]

Maerl sands are deposits formed by the shells of some specific red algae living mostly off the Brittany and Ireland coasts: along the Atlantic coast of Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall. Because it is primary composed of calcium and magnesium carbonate, but it contains also high amounts of magnesium, iron and other elements, maerl has been [...]

The entry no 879 in my collection contains a famous sample among sand collectors: garnet sand. The garnet is a group of minerals used since the old times as gemstone, some popular species including Uvarovite, Pyrope, Grossulaite, Almandite, Andradite, Spessartite. The garnet is also renowned for displaying the greatest variety of color than any other [...]