Adverts
Canadians who speak the Inuit dialect have more than 50 names for snow and even more for ice. In northern Quebec, “matsaaruti” is the snow that freezes the runners of a sled and “aqilokoq” refers to the softly falling snow. Meanwhile, your “piegnartoq” is the snow that keeps your sled moving. As for ice, if it is full of holes, it is called “auniq”.
Likewise, sand is more than a word can convey.
Adverts
Sand Demand
One handful of sand might be made up of crushed marble, while another might be quartz, shells, and pieces of plastic. The sand can be more or less firm. The amount of water it absorbs varies. And yet, the only other name for sand is aggregate.
volleyball sand
Adverts
Beach volleyball generally cannot be played on the beach because the sand is too firm. When players dive, they tear hamstrings and break bones. With volleyball sand, the texture allows players to dig their ankles in. Sand specifications prohibit fine particles such as silt and clay. It drains so easily that it's impossible to build a sand castle with it. Beach volleyball promoters submit their sands for approval by the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball. And according to The New Yorkerjust one tournament required 1,360 tons of sand.
Use of sand
At this point in beach volleyball we could jump to the other types of sand we use. No, it's not desert sand. Wrongly shaped and too smooth, our huge supply of desert sand is useless. Instead, we need angular sand from riverbeds, banks and floodplains, from which we can create 5,237 square miles of artificial terrain. But we also need high-purity silica sand for solar panels, smartphone screens and computer chips. We need sand for our water filtration and septic systems. A typical house has more than 100 tons of sand in the foundation, entrance and windowpanes. One mile of single-lane road needs about 38,000 tons of sand. The UN estimates that the world uses between 40 and 50 billion tons of sand annually. According to the BBC, China has used more sand in the last 10 years than the US used throughout the 20th century.
Our Conclusion: Reverend Malthus
Perhaps one of the earliest environmentalists, the Reverend Thomas Malthus, told us in 1798 that population grows geometrically while resource production expands arithmetically. He thought resource prices will rise and supply will become increasingly inadequate.
I summarized what Malthus predicted:
The reverend could have been talking about sand.
My sources and more: A recent Economist article and the BBC reminded me it was time to get back on the sand. Fortunately, this brings us back to what (always interesting) David Owen said in New Yorker six years ago and also this BBC scientific report. But it also connected us to the snow.
Please note that several of today's sentences were written in 2017 economic life post in the sand.
