Blog - Through the sandglass

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All that glitters ...

At the end of my last post on granular segregation and placer mineral deposits, I included a photo of a sand sample from Yosemite that is reputed to contain fla...

June 1, 2009 2 min read

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Granular segregation and the Gold Rush

Anyone walking on the beach or through the dunes will often notice areas of dark gray smeared across the surface, often outlining ripples, as if an artist had h...

June 1, 2009 15 min read

Oceano dunes (2) - Egyptian archaeology

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November 24, 2025 5 min read

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On the road in California 3 - tafoni yet again

I’ve done a couple of posts on tafoni, the exotic and wonderful natural sculpturing of, commonly, sandstones. As I was putting together the piece on the ways in...

June 1, 2009 2 min read

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Streams of grains - some more amazing granular research

As I’m sure I’ve said before, to watch the sands of an hourglass in action is to observe all kinds of natural phenomena at work - and all kinds of questions to...

June 1, 2009 6 min read

The Monterey Submarine Canyon - continued

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November 24, 2025 12 min read

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June 2009

Musings and news on the extraordinary stories sand has to tell of our planet and daily lives

June 1, 2009 6 min read

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A different "beginning" - and a short, off-piste, rant

Sir Laurence Dudley Stamp (my previous post) must be turning in his grave. It’s ironic that, shortly after my modest proposal on the inspirational potential of...

July 1, 2009 5 min read

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"Giant sand worms lived in Torbay"

What a headline - how could I resist? It’s from the UK newspaper, The Telegraph, earlier this year - it’s not the paper I read, so I only just came across it on...

July 1, 2009 5 min read

Inspiration - the beginnings of a geologist

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November 24, 2025 8 min read

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Rivers Run Dry - but why?

This map shows the change in runoff inferred from streamflow records worldwide between 1948 and 2004, with bluish colors indicating more streamflow and reddish...

July 1, 2009 5 min read

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The sandfish - "like a man diving into water"

My aspiration for the book and this blog, beyond the hope that they would be read at all, has always been that readers would be surprised. This arose simply bec...

July 1, 2009 6 min read