Recently spent a few days on Daytona Beach. I’ve never seen a beach quite like it. I’m more used to the soft, white sands along the gulf. At Daytona, the sand is hard enough to drive on. Pretty wild to have cars driving up and down the beach…
But I haven’t really been able to find out exactly what it is than makes this sand so hard. Is it the particle size? The slope? Something else?
I don’t know but I loved Daytona Beach for this very reason. I could wheel my chair on the beach, not a common feat on beaches.
The guy setting up the cabanas needed to use an auger on a hand drill to set up the umbrellas.
Absolutely nothing to do with answering the question, but:
A few weeks ago Ms Hook and I were in Normandy, France where we took a day long tour of the D-Day area. There our guide told us that by far the most casualties of the invasion were taken on Omaha beach. Why? Because the German troops there were of a higher caliber than the other beaches. For instance, Utah beach was largely defended by men who were recruited from conquered countries who had little real interest in fighting and surrendered in large numbers rather quickly. Also Omaha beach was a defensive dream. The Americans had to cross some 600 yards of dead flat beach while the Germans were on high, steep hills with a number of concrete positions and unobstructed firing lanes.
The general staff who did the planning knew all this. So why did they land there?
It was the sand. Like Daytona Beach it was hard enough to drive heavy vehicles on. It was the only beach in the Normandy area where large numbers of heavy equipment (tanks and the like) could be landed in large number with any assurance that they wouldn’t bog down.
According to the guide teams were sent to all the beaches in northern France to take samples of the sand. Omaha Beach was the only one in the invasion area to meet the requirements for landing large amounts of equipment.
Interesting. I’ve never heard that before, but it makes perfect sense. Did they happen to mention how the scouts got away with that? As you say, there were German soldiers stationed all the way along the coast; did they think to stop these people and ask why they were taking samples of the sand? I also wonder if the Germans took that into account when planning their defenses; maybe put some extra heavy weapons at Omaha Beach because that’s the only place where tanks could come ashore.
Ever heard of the Daytona 500? Well, it’s not a coincidence that it’s in the same city. They’ve been racing cars on that beach since there have been cars. That’s where they used to go to set land speed world records!
Ever heard of NASCAR? The first NASCAR races took place on that beach!
Wow - no answers yet. Woulda thought there was a straightforward explanation…
I live 80 miles north of Daytona Beach. The tidal range here is fairly large, and the sand gets wetted and packed down twice a day. Note you typically cannot drive where the sand is very dry and fluffy from not being reached by the tide without getting bogged down. It’s consistency is a typical mixture of quartz and tiny bits of shell. HTH.
There are lots and lots of types of sand. How it “acts” depends on the size and shape and composition of the grains. I’ve never been to Daytona beach, but I’m guessing that the grains are especially small and therefore pack together more closely. I know that I have been on beaches where the sand is “normal” on one stretch but in other areas are probably as hard as Daytona. At least one I know of actually has ripples shaped into the surface with a wavelength so that the beach looks something like a wavy washboard.
I posted this link in a different thread sarcastically, but it really is a fascinating site, where you can not only learn about various sands of the world but also the fact that “sand collectors” are A Thing with lots of web sites. Here is what Daytona Beach sand looks like on the afore-mentioned site.
Actually its having a range of sizes that makes it able to set solid. The shell material provides that , and makes the material more dense and each particle sticks (held by friction ) to the neighbour more firmly. Also the shells provide calcium phosphate/carbonate which migrates from the shell to the sand… it glues the whole lot together.
The dunes near the brown beach are regular sand colour… this is because only the silica sand blows up there to form dunes, and the sand dunes are soft because there is only the similar sized silica particles, and no glue substance.
The very wet part of the beach may get soft sand on the surface, because during the high tide on a gentle wave day only silica is deposited, but on days with larger waves the waves stir the shells back up and it goes brown and hard again
I live 15 miles south of Daytona, I asked at the Marine Science Center and was told it was tide and grain size, like someone else mentioned. Some people say it compaction from the cars that keeps it hard, but it you go down to the tideline when the tide is out (far from the driving lanes) you still have very hard sand.
In my experience it’s the flat beaches that are harder. Apart from waves, the sea is pretty horizontal, and if the beach is nearly horizontal, the water will not be very far down. No doubt the sand type also contributes, but that may be a function of flat beaches.
I used to live near Pendine Beach in Wales, which was also used for racing in the early days. When I was there in the 60s, you could park on the beach and it was a regular event for some dumbo to get their car caught by the invisibly rising tide. We also use to go racing off down the length of the beach after the barriers were taken down in the afternoon.
I meant “a wavelength of a few inches” and it looks like this. (I have photos of the beaches myself, but they are from the pre-digital days and don’t remember if any are scanned.)
Thanks for all the answers - keep 'em coming.
This makes sense to me. (In my ignorance) kinda like concrete, requiring aggregate to set. I can imagine the fluffy white sands on the gulf are predominantly a single particle type/size.
Even above the tide line, the sand was harder than I have encountered on the gulf side, or here in the Chicago area along Lake Michigan.
Another (probably stupid) sand question - is it possible to identify the sources of sand in a particular location? I imagine it is primarily from wind/water erosion. For example, in Chicago, I believe the erosion occurs up in Wisconsin, and washes down the lake. Or in Hawaii, the black sand represents erosion of the lava. Or ocean sand can contain ground up seashells. But are scientists able to identify a particular source where the quartz for a particular beach comes from? How much of it is washed into the ocean via rivers?
I’ve heard about sand collectors before. Actually kinda appealed to me as a way to memorialize one’s travels, tho I never got around to collecting/labeling/buying jars, etc.
When we were young, we used to go to Panama City Beach nearly every spring. Incredible powdery white sand. On a couple of occasions, my dad filled the car trunk up with sand, and filled our Chicago sandbox with it. The other kids didn’t believe it was sand! 
Actually, IIRC it kinda sucked for a sandbox, as it did not stick together when wet for making bucket castles and the like…
This makes sense – it’s the same principle used in making concrete – one average, if you have a variety of sizes you can more efficiently fill a volume that by trying to fill it with components of only a single size. Have a look, for instance, at the diagram in the linked page – compare “Well graded” with “Poorly graded”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that this is, in fact, why the Daytona sand is so hard. Or, if it is, why the sand at Daytona is that way, rather than presumably similar-sized grains as at other beaches.
From what I have read it seems the difference between a hard beach and a soft beach is the amount of air in the sand. Hard beaches have very little air in them. Beaches where the tides cover the entire beach for an extended period of time will be harder because the air will be more time to come out. Flar beaches will also be harder than sloped beaches.
Don’t know enough about Daytona to know if this applies to that beach.
If the rocks have distinctive isotope ratios, yes.
I like to sift the debris from sand and take the debris home to search for fossils, interesting shells, etc. There are, for example, small bryozoan colonies that form on a single grain of sand. (See the smaller stuff in this post.)
DG - one thing I LOVE about this site is finding folk even geekier than myself! 
Spent many an hour searching for beach glass and crinoids along the IN Dunes, but never put the sand itself under the scope!
We have a word for Daytona Beach
Gravel
