How to Become a Sand Collector

This is directly from the INTERNATIONAL SAND COLLECTORS SOCIETY website 

Anyone can become a sand collector. Children to seniors, even people with disabilities have enjoyed this pastime for many years. There is however, one important factor in becoming a psammophile and that is the ability to observe and wonder. This is key. One must learn how to look closely at not only sand but of the surrounding area in which one is collecting. Whether a beach, lake, river, desert, etc., the surrounding area will tell you much about the sand beneath your feet and how it got there. 

One of the myths about sand collecting is that once you have collected a sample from a given area, there is no need to look further as all sand will be exactly the same – not true.

Often one will discover that sand can be quite different sample to sample within just a few yards or even feet of each other, so it is very important to observe and wonder.

Some of the equipment one will need:

Plastic baggies, film containers or nearly anything that is damp proof, easy to carry, and inexpensive. One should keep a supply of these containers in one’s car, luggage, tote bag, etc., while traveling, camping, or hiking. One never knows when one will come across an interesting sand sample. The size of your sample bag or container will depend if you wish to collect only for yourself or if you might wish to exchange your samples with others. One should also have handy a permanent marker or some other writing instrument to record its location on the bag, container or note pad. Never assume you will remember where your gathered sample is from, especially if you are planning on collecting more than one sample.

A spoon will be useful in digging sand particularly if the ground is hard packed or frozen. Though plastic spoons will work, and especially recommended if traveling by air, they do tend to break.

A magnifying, hand held hand-lens or eye-loop is also wise to carry and one can see their sample close-up for differences within samples from the same locale. Those items are about all one needs in the field to collect sand.

Once home, your samples should be logged into a logbook, file card system, computer, etc. Try noting as much information you can about the location that sample comes from, e.g. date collected, state, town, park, river, beach, etc. Try to be as specific as you can as to where on the beach you gathered your sample, low tide mark,high tide mark, upper beach area, left of pier, etc. If you have taken more than one sample from the same place, mark it as such (variety #1, variety #2, etc.). Record as much information about that sample’s origins as possible. It will be important. 

After logging in your data, you will want to contain your sample, either in a smaller baggie, bottle, jar, etc. The container you display your sample in will be of your choosing but one should keep a few things in mind. If having to purchase this container, what costs are you willing to bear? Be aware, a sand collection can grow quite rapidly, so weight, expense, and the amount of storage or display room you have should be a consideration at the onset. Once a container has been selected, you may wish to attach an outside display label for others to read. One can also add a paper label within the samples itself in the event the outer label falls off; however, before ever adding paper into a sand sample, that sample must be perfectly dry for the slightest moisture will penetrate the paper and make it unreadable in little time. One can make sure a sample is dry by airing it out on several layers of old newspapers or in an oven.

Other items one might wish to make or purchase are:

A sieve with a grid size no larger than 2 mm

At least one good road atlas and a world atlas to track down where samples come from and their correct spellings 

A funnel for pouring sand from your gathering bags into your display containers

Again a hand-lens or eye-loop (10x is fine)

And a microscope (again10x-20x is good) Other items might include a magnet to test for magnetite in a sample and white household vinegarfor testing for carbonate sands. I cannot stress the point strong enough. Begin with a good record keeping system, record everything, people who donated samples to your collection, those people you have made trades with and what samples you exchanged with them, etc. Also, your display containers will generally be your biggest expense. Find a container that will fit your needs and finances, and be sure these containers will be available whenever you need to purchase them. Consider their size and weight with sand within. Many beginning collectors either do not realize these considerations early or choose to ignore this advice and then start to rethink their situation some years later. It is time consuming and expensive to change one’s mind afterwards. Do it right at the beginning. That is about all one truly needs to become a full-fledged sand collector and with that, one can indeed discover the world, grain by grain.

Important Note: One should be mindful about the area in which they are exploring and if that area is privately owned. Also, there are areas on federal, state, and city/town lands that restrict people from collecting items. Be aware of where you are and if you may take sand from that area.

DIY Sand Collecting Kits

Wendy O'Neal gives some handy tips for DIY Sand Collecting Kits. Very cool for kids to start this when they are young, just think what a collection they will have later in life.

A microscopic look at why the world is running out of sand

Humans are using more sand than the Earth is naturally producing, and that’s a problem for the global construction industry. But it turns out that the usefulness of sand depends on the science of each tiny little grain. We went on a sand scavenger hunt to collect some samples, look at them under a microscope, and try to figure out why sand scarcity is such a problem. 

The Amazing Life of Sand | Deep Look

There's a story in every grain of sand: tales of life and death, fire and water. If you scooped up a handful of sand from every beach, you'd have a history of the world sifting through your fingers 

The Sand Lab

Sand!

Tonny Brinkman: Sand Collector

Sand collector Tonny Brinkman has generously donated 3500 sands to Auckland Museum - and her decades of collecting show that you can explore the world without going far from home. As the motto of International Sand Collectors Society says: 'Discovering the World, Grain by Grain'. 

Tonny (Antonia) Brinkman was born in The Netherlands in 1924, came to New Zealand in 1963, and today lives in Henderson. She began collecting in 1977 and by collecting and swapping with others has a huge collection of not just sand, but also rocks and minerals. With the latter she won many prizes at rock and mineral shows. These are now disbursed to family, the Matakohe Kauri Museum, and some are in Auckland Museum’s Brinkman Collection. Tonny clearly derived a lot of pleasure and gained great knowledge of other places by swapping with people from all over the world, learning about where the sand came from and why. Without the advantage of the internet it was mostly done via the postal system and use of the library. Some of the overseas collectors sent detailed maps and diagrams of exactly when and where the sand was collected. Unlike many collectors Tonny meticulously noted and recorded details of each sample which are labelled accordingly. This is what makes the Brinkman Collection scientifically valuable. Phew, so much work! 

Thanks to the generous donation of Tonny, the Museum now has a huge collection of sands (over 3500) from Antarctica to Norway and from New Zealand to Australia, Africa and South America.  

Sentiments for sediments People who love sand are called arenophiles, from the Latin arena for sand or sandy area, such as the floor of the Colosseum in Rome (hence our use of the word today for sports facilities). A geologist who studies arenaceous sediment is called a sedimentologist. What is sand? 

To a geologist or sedimentologist sand is particulate material ranging in size from 0.063 to 2 millimetres in size. It can be derived from the weathering and erosion of any rock (igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary), or it could be a volcanic ash, or be derived from the breakdown of marine organisms (e.g. Coromandel beach shell sand), or is produced by microscopic animals and plants such as foraminifera (e.g. tropical beaches), or diatoms (e.g. fresh water lakes), or be chemical 'precipitates' (e.g. tropical oolites). 

 Natural processes will sort and concentrate sand-sized particles by size, density and durability giving rise to some unique and beautiful sands. For example the green olivine-rich sands of Hawaii, red garnet-rich sands of Southland, black magnetic iron oxide-rich sands along the West Coast of New Zealand or the golden quartz-rich desert sands of uniform grain size sorted by the wind in arid climates. Tonny's collection includes examples of all of these from a huge range of environments (deserts, beaches, rivers, lakes, volcanoes, submarine environments and human processing of materials). Probably the only place she doesn't have sand from is other parts of the solar system or the Universe!  

Why is the collection important? The aesthetic beauty of the sands aside, Tonny's collection has great untapped research potential. Firstly they are an archive of what a given area used to be like and can be used to document change or impacts. Those who study sedimentary rocks would find them useful palaeoenvironmental indicators since 'the present is a key to the past'. For example a sandstone may have an unusual grain-size distribution or mineralogy that can be matched to one of Tonny's samples. So the modern sand and its data could be used as an analogue to tell us what the environment was like when the ancient sediments were being deposited millions of years ago. 

 The samples could even be used forensically. Sand can stick to tyres and be found inside vehicles, footwear or clothing. Despite denials, matching the suspect sediment to Tonny's sand library might well tell us where someone had been recently - literally anywhere in the world. A similar technique was used to help convict some of the French agents responsible for the Rainbow Warrior bombing in 1985. 

At the very least, just holding a container of sand from an exotic place and using your imagination can transport you there.