Mildly Interesting

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Some sand can look beautiful under a microscope (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Source: Wired, 2014

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Ok I took some mediocre photos of the sand with this cheap digital microscope, it looks very nice. Can you tell anything about it?

magnifyed pink sand on a glass slide

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Awesome photos!

Whoa you were not kidding about that being pink. Holy cow. I mean..the pink grains could potentially be garnet but I'm a little doubtful and unsteady at saying that for sure. They have conchoidal fracture and a vitreous sheen which could easily be quartz, perhaps stained by something else going on in the area (Mn? > Fe).

Those blue green grains are fricken neato, I don't have a good explanation for them and can't really get a good look from the photos.

I see a couple of green grains that could be epidote or some other green mineral, and one that looks a little olivine-esque but it's hard to tell.

It's one of those things that you poke and prod and rotate and stare at for a while before giving a broad, hand wavy guess.

It would probably be helpful to look up the location and the formation to get a better sense of what to expect.

Either way, those are dope!