Reprinted with permission from Maya at the Completely Coastal website. Her article was published September 7, 2012 and can be found here.

A Grain of Beach Sand – Photography Book by Gary Greenberg
“To see a world in a grain of sand…” These are the words of William Blake. Artist and scientist Gary Greenberg takes them literally!

Dr. Gary Greenberg turned his microscope on beach sand! Photo via Art.com.

Watch this quick video and you’ll see that grains of sand are not just little brown rocks.

Grains of sand comprise much more. They are revealing a world of gemlike minerals, colorful coral fragments, delicate microscopic shells and more.

Gary Greenberg began his career as photographer and filmmaker, and after earning a Ph.D. in biomedical research, he went on to invent high-definition, three-dimensional light microscopes.

His beautiful micro photography captures the spectacular shapes, patterns and colors of sand grains. 

You can learn more about Gary Greenberg’s book A Grain of Sand on his website! Will you ever look at sand the same way?

Enjoy your weekend!

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Editor’s Note: I posted this article because it shows that sand is not always small stones, but consists of broken glass, shells, wood, etc.

Many years ago when we were near a beach, my wife Karen and I used to collect the tiny shells from the beach sand. We used a magnifying glass to spot the tiny fully-formed shells in the handful of sand. We removed the shells with our fingertips and deposited them in small bottles full of sea water, which allowed the tiny shell to slide off our finger.

At that time my wife was into creating dollhouse accessories and one of these were small baskets full of seashells and tiny starfish. The size is hard to see from the photo above, even compared to a thimble. Below is a photo showing the exact size of the basket – under one inch (<2.5 cms). – retlkpr