How is beach sand made?
There are dazzling white sands and sands of sooty black. There are brindled mixtures of browns and sands rich in metallic fragments. But most of the beach and desert sands we know best are golden yellow. And every kind of sand has its own long story to tell. Gritty grains of sand are made of very durable minerals. They may measure anywhere from 12 to 400 to the inch and chances are they can Endure the pounding waves or the wild desert winds for centuries before breaking into still finer fragments. Our favorite stretches of beach sand are made mostly of quartz, and quartz happens to be the hardest of the Earth’s common minerals. It is a compound of the elements oxygen and silicon. Its molecules were formed when the Earth was young, often during violent volcanic activity. Other minerals also formed at such times and mixed together in flowing rivers of molten lava. When the lava cooled, the mixtures of minerals hardened into granites and other igneous rocks. Granite is a plum cake mixture
