FOR THE Love OF Sand! Become a Psammophile!

While rock and mineral collectors often seek the biggest crystal ever, true wonders exist at the microscopic level.

- JIM BRACE-THOMPSON

A single teaspoon of sand from a beach, riverbed or desert dune can hold a world you never imagined when viewed through the lens of a microscope. A whole community of fellow enthusiasts exists for exchanging these tiny bits of amazing nature from around the world. You can join that community. But beware. Once you start, it's all too easy to get hooked!

SAND COLLECTORS DEFINED

People who are fascinated by and who collect sand wherever they can are called psammophiles, or arenophiles. The term psammophile is derived from the Greek words psammo (sand) and phile (lover of). If you prefer Latin over Greek, you would be an arenophile.

True-blue sand lovers not only carry ziplock baggies to scoop up samples, they dump out shoes after a walk across a beach or desert dune to see what treasures they may have gathered.

WHAT IS SAND? 

A heap of sand is a collection of microminerals and/or microfossils with a grain size residing between silt and gravel. Precisely, "very fine" sand has a grain size of 0.0625 to 0.125 mm, and "very coarse" sand has a grain size of up to 2+ mm.

Sand often starts from rocks that weather and decompose. Sand is generally divided into three basic types derived from different sources.

• Hard Mineral Grains These include quartz and feldspar weathered and eroded from igneous rocks such as granites or from metamorphic rocks like quartzite (which is ultimately derived from sedimentary sandstone formed from sand).