# Sand facts **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 15, 2017, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960 "2017-10-15T17:52:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960/21 "2017-10-16T14:06:24Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > 1. As grains of sand (and smaller stuff, too) move through the water, bigger (heavier) ones tend to settle faster, so the result is that the big rocks fall out in one spot, and the smaller ones somewhere else (and the silt ends up in a different place). So when sand washes onto a beach, it’s going to be somewhat sorted by size. [The wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_sediment_transport#Grain_size_determination) is barely a stub, but [this](https://www.jstor.org/stable/4300148?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) looks to be a useful article on the topic, for those with access to the full article (which I don’t have.) Also, [this](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JC008073/full). (tl:dr, like with many science questions, it is complex and mathy.) This reminds me of a minor mystery I encountered years back–while beach combing with my grandmother we happened on a spot where (aged, so no longer lettered) [lettered olive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettered_olive) shells were washing up with the waves. In a matter of minutes, from a patch of beach maybe 20 feet wide, between us we collected more than 500 of the shells as they washed up at our feet. Normally, you didn’t often find even _one_ of them while walking along the wave line, with finds being at the upper beach as rain exposed them from sand dredged from off-shore and piped in during beach reclamation projects. I have no idea why so many old shells were concentrated in that one narrow location. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960/22 "2017-10-16T15:57:26Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > No. The area of a country is finite. The coast is [infinitely long](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox). But you can extend the same argument regarding linear dimensions to three dimensions as well, so the area of a continent is even more infinite than its coastline!😉 ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960/23 "2017-10-16T16:18:17Z")
I heard once that sand is coarse and gets everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960/24 "2017-10-16T16:25:05Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > But you can extend the same argument regarding linear dimensions to three dimensions as well, so the area of a continent is even more infinite than its coastline!😉 The fractal infinite dimension of coastlines and English muffins is immaterial (heh) because the divisors are not symbolic points in a mathematical domain but physical objects with a discrete size. So you can safely measure the amount and call it quits without appeal to the infinite. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960/25 "2017-10-16T17:12:34Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > But you can extend the same argument regarding linear dimensions to three dimensions as well, so the area of a continent is even more infinite than its coastline!😉 But people generally don’t measure the area of land as following the ups and downs of the terrain in the way that they do for coast lines. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960/26 "2017-10-16T17:37:48Z")
> [@gazpacho](#): > > But people generally don’t measure the area of land as following the ups and downs of the terrain in the way that they do for coast lines. But the relevant dimension for erosion is the three-dimensional land surface, not the two-dimensional area conventionally considered, so it _should_ take into account the vertical dimension. But in any case, they don’t measure coastlines using infinitely smaller measurements either. It’s a theoretical argument. (Notice the smiley in my post.) ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960/27 "2017-10-16T19:15:04Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > But the relevant dimension for erosion is the three-dimensional land surface, not the two-dimensional area conventionally considered, so it _should_ take into account the vertical dimension. But in any case, they don’t measure coastlines using infinitely smaller measurements either. It’s a theoretical argument. (Notice the smiley in my post.) 🙂 I can see someone at a local fair taking exception when someone else wins the “Guess how many spoons in the jar” concession. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960/28 "2017-10-16T20:49:12Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > No. The area of a country is finite. The coast is [infinitely long](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox). length =/= area Is a Koch snowflake that is inscribed in a circle larger than the circle? No. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sand-facts/798960.md?page=1)