BF2S Forums EE (hats - Noice November

Stimey wrote:

dont have a webcam guys!

-Sh1fty- wrote:

Kmar wrote:

gurdeep wrote:

sigh, i wish the beaches here were that nice. pacific ocean sucks. the whales should start coming through next month tho

That is Siesta Key.. easily one of the top beaches in the world .. although that picture does not do it much justice. The sand is like powdered sugar.

Wow that's amazing! I'd love to go to that beautiful beach!

What makes sands ugly big chunks vs that beautiful sugar? Also, what do whales have to do with anything?

Siesta Key sand really is in a class by itself. It is clean and very white, dazzling white and it squeaks when you compress it in your hand or walk on it like confectioners sugar or even corn starch. Siesta Key’s sand is unparalleled and for good reason as this sand is like no other. The sand is quartz and a study by Harvard University’s geology department found that the sand was 99 percent pure quartz crystal, ultimately derived from the southern Appalachian Mountains. Over millenniums, the quartz sand crystals were carried by rivers into the Gulf and down Florida’s coast. Those quartz crystals are very fine, without any coral or shell fragments, which results in sand with a soft, flour-like texture.

Quartz sand comes from igneous rock, the kind of rock that once was molten. Quartz is a very hard substance, graded at 7 on a hardness scale of 10. Diamonds are rated 10 on this scale. Minerals of hardness 7 cannot be scratched with the point of a steel knife. The most common such substance is granite. Because quartz is a crystal it actually dissipates the heat of the sun and leaves our beach cool on the hottest days. On most beaches sunbathers are laying on blankets, towels or mats for some insulation from the hot sand on those plus 90 or even 80 Fahrenheit degree days that is being baked by the solar waves of the sun. They will also do their walking in sandals or along the shore, but not on Siesta Key where bare footing on the sand is not ever a problem.

Nobody can calculate how many eons of time have passed since Siesta Key sand first appeared from fragmented rock, but Siesta Key sand is quite old. We know this not only because of the very fine grains, but also because other components of the original rock, such as feldspar, mica and other minerals, have almost completely disappeared, leaving only the extremely hard quartz.

Kmar wrote:

gurdeep wrote:

Kmar wrote:

This is the closest we get to it here..

sigh, i wish the beaches here were that nice. pacific ocean sucks. the whales should start coming through next month tho

That is Siesta Key.. easily one of the top beaches in the world .. although that picture does not do it much justice. The sand is like powdered sugar.

Kmar wrote:

gurdeep wrote:

Kmar wrote:

This is the closest we get to it here..

sigh, i wish the beaches here were that nice. pacific ocean sucks. the whales should start coming through next month tho

That is Siesta Key.. easily one of the top beaches in the world .. although that picture does not do it much justice. The sand is like powdered sugar.