I used to love playing in it and with it as a kid -- I'd even roll in it after swimming in the ocean to get warm (it felt wonderful!). I'd get most of it off with a towel, but some always seemed to wind up in the sheets, to my mother's chagrin. It was my first construction material -- I built sandcastles, freeways, tunnels, seawalls and forts, and I dug deep holes to hide in. I've had as much fun as a dad, doing the same things on visits to Lake Michigan with my daughters.
I began to look closer at beach sand and noticed that there are varieties. The sand I saw only at very low tide was fine and usually gray; where the waves broke on the beach, the sand was very coarse and more crystalline; it became more fine and white the further up the beach-slope we went. There were sometimes streaks of black sand that we found we could pick up with a magnet -- iron sand! It was fascinating.
Since the early 19902, I've been collecting sand from various places around the U.S., mostly from beaches, but also from rivers, lakes, the desert and some odd sources such as ant hills and hotel cigarette urns. I recently learned that other people collect sand, too. One such sand collector is Bob Campbell -- he has great info and links on his site.
The science of sand is wonderfully laid out in Sand, a book by Raymond Siever and published by Scientific American Library.
