Sand is so confusing. I go to one beach and it’s soft sand I go five minutes down the road and is angry sand full of broken shells and hurts my feet, I go to the other side of the country and it’s made of rocks and no sand. I look at photos of the Sahara desert and there is lots of sand and no sea! How does the sand decide where to go?
Also if I brought my digger to the beach and made a big hole would there be dirt under the sand?
In: Planetary Science
The reason sand exists, and is particularly common near oceans and lakes, is because the motion of the water running over rocks breaks off tiny pieces of the rocks and then deposits it on the beach. So the type of sand depends on where it’s coming from and what types of rocks are being deposited there.
As far as the shells, that’s also related to currents. There are certain areas in an ocean that have more dense aquatic life like shells and they tend to get deposited in certain places due to the currents.
If you dug under the sand deep enough, you would eventually find soil that isn’t sand but you’d have to go really really deep. That sand has been getting deposited there for millions of years.
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