Seeing Sands From Different Seas

This particular sand viewed through a microscope is from Maine. As observed, its got different colors throughout every fragment, browns, greens, whites, blues, mostly dark colors though. This sand was not magnetic, and has a size of about 1 millimeter. Our class determined that the sand can be classified as angular, moderately sorted, and composed of different rocks and possible debris.

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Effects of Sand

Sand is always moving. The beaches you might visit everyday are not perminent features. The shape and size of beaches change everyday on a small scale and somtimes drastically over a longer period of time. The changes occur becasue of various reasons but its always because of the sand moving.

In our Oceanography class we looked at different sand samples from around the United States under microscopes and noticed the many differences. Some of the differences are visable to the naked eye and some require the use of a microscope. Here is the list of traits we observed:

• Color
• Magnetite
• Size
• Texture
• Wentworth Scale
• Sorting
• Composition

A few days after doing our observations we went on a field trip to our local beach. We looked at the sand closely but it did not look any different than the sand we were used to. Although the sand varys greatly around the world, it usually doesnt look very different when the beaches are close to each other. The drastic changes can only seen if one compares sand from different areas across the world. Here is a few examples of the diversity found in beach sand colors.

source:

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/ASK/beacherosion.html

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GLACIERS

Stickneys Boulder

On our field trip we saw a lot of glacial features. One even in our hometown. Many of theses glacial features were very interesting, especially the one in haverhill in the woods was very interesting. g

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