John McPhee had a great New Yorker article (which I think was also in the collection Irons in the Fire), where he wrote about how U.S. geologists used sand found in the Japanese "Fu-Go" bombs that made it to the NW US to figure out their launch sites from specific beaches near Tokyo.
I've heard that desert sand is fundamentally smoother than beach or river sand. Would love to see some examples of non-beach sand side-by-side with these glorious samples.
I think the rotating photos create a poor UX. The purpose of this layout it seems is to let users view the images carefully and study the details, but the slideshow effect makes that difficult.
It starts on the 9th page here
https://gwern.net/doc/technology/1996-mcphee.pdf
I'm sure it's very much frowned upon these days but somewhere I have a 35mm film canister full of the coral fragments.
[1] https://www.isleofskye.com/skye-guide/top-ten-skye-walks/cor... [2] https://www.isleofskye.com/skye-guide/top-ten-skye-walks/cor...
I've heard that desert sand is fundamentally smoother than beach or river sand. Would love to see some examples of non-beach sand side-by-side with these glorious samples.
Ask and ye shall receive.
It seemed far fetched then, but after seeing these pictures it really makes sense.