How does the sand on a beach not get washed away by the tide? Why does it not all end up at the bottom of the river / sea?
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It often does get washed away. Many beaches do periodic replenishment of the sand. They will dredge sand out of areas where it naturally collects when washed off the beach and dump the sand back on the beach.
It was fascinating watching them do this at a beach town near me several years ago. They had a special barge that went out a ways and down the coast a bit to where the topology of the ocean floor was causing the washed out sand to collect. The barge vacuumed the sand up off the ocean floor and dumped it into the barge hopper. When the load was full they came back up the coast and came in almost to the pointing of beaching the barge. Then the bottom of the barge opened dropping the load of sand out. They repeated this process over and over building up a sand bar just beyond the beach. As the tide went out the sand bar was close enough it became nearly dry land between it and the beach. They then used a bulldozer to level off the sand bar filling in the remaining small gap of water between the sand bar and the beach. They repeated this process until they had built up enough sand to extend the beach out by about 200 feet.
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