Download or read book The World in a Grain written by Vince Beiser and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives. After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper to the sidewalk below it, from Chartres' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and our future. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it--and sometimes, even kill for it. It's also a provocative examination of the serious human and environmental costs incurred by our dependence on sand, which has received little public attention. Not all sand is created equal: Some of the easiest sand to get to is the least useful. Award-winning journalist Vince Beiser delves deep into this world, taking readers on a journey across the globe, from the United States to remote corners of India, China, and Dubai to explain why sand is so crucial to modern life. Along the way, readers encounter world-changing innovators, island-building entrepreneurs, desert fighters, and murderous sand pirates. The result is an entertaining and eye-opening work, one that is both unexpected and involving, rippling with fascinating detail and filled with surprising characters.

Download or read book Sand written by Michael Welland and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-01-15 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From individual grains to desert dunes, from the bottom of the sea to the landscapes of Mars, and from billions of years in the past to the future, this is the extraordinary story of one of nature's humblest, most powerful, and most ubiquitous materials. Told by a geologist with a novelist's sense of language and narrative, Sand examines the science—sand forensics, the physics of granular materials, sedimentology, paleontology and archaeology, planetary exploration—and at the same time explores the rich human context of sand. Interwoven with tales of artists, mathematicians, explorers, and even a vampire, the story of sand is an epic of environmental construction and destruction, an adventure in staggering scales of time and distance, yet a tale that encompasses the ordinary and everyday. Sand, in fact, is all around us—it has made possible our computers, buildings and windows, toothpaste, cosmetics, and paper, and it has played dramatic roles in human history, commerce, and imagination. In this luminous, kinetic, revelatory account, we do indeed find the world in a grain of sand.

Download or read book A Million Grains of Sand written by Danny L. Formhals, Sr. and published by . This book was released on 2016-07-21 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever pondered how much God thinks about you? Not just what He thinks about you, your life, and your character, but how many times has He considered you? In his book, A Million Grains of Sand, author Danny Formhals Sr. share a powerful insight into what a grain of sand means to God? Sand is both an annoyance, and amazing at the same time. An annoyance when it gets in your eye, and amazing when you see it the way God does. Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV) states, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." In this book you'll see sand in a new light. And, you will gain a powerful perspective on just one grain, as well as a million of them. Just as you are a product of God, so is a grain of sand.

Download or read book Sand in the Wind written by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn by troubling dreams of a handsome Indian Warrior, Colleen Merrill had come westward with her brutal husband to homestead in the Montana wilderness--only to fall in love with Lieutenant Matthew Douglas, a dashing U.S. Cavalry officer. Wounded Bear, a young Cheyenne warrior and medicine man, had been told in a vision by the great spirit--wolf that a golden-haired woman held the power to save his people from invasion. As the drums of war beat every louder, Wounded Bear knew he must find this woman, or the Cheyenne would be scattered--like grains of sand in the wind. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Mountain Mystery written by Ron Miksha and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years ago, no one could explain mountains. Arguments about their origin were spirited, to say the least. Progressive scientists were ridiculed for their ideas. Most geologists thought the Earth was shrinking. Contracting like a hot ball of iron, shrinking and exposing ridges that became mountains. Others were quite sure the planet was expanding. Growth widened sea basins and raised mountains. There was yet another idea, the theory that the world's crust was broken into big plates that jostled around, drifting until they collided and jarred mountains into existence. That idea was invariably dismissed as pseudo-science. Or "utter damned rot" as one prominent scientist said. But the doubtful theory of plate tectonics prevailed. Mountains, earthquakes, ancient ice ages, even veins of gold and fields of oil are now seen as the offspring of moving tectonic plates. Just half a century ago, most geologists sternly rejected the idea of drifting continents. But a few intrepid champions of plate tectonics dared to differ. The Mountain Mystery tells their story.

Download or read book A Grain of Sand written by Gary Greenberg and published by Voyageur Press. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower. To hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour." William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence"1805 Here is the world viewed within a grain of sand, thanks to the stunning three-dimensional microphotography of Dr. Gary Greenberg. To some, all sand looks alike--countless grains in a vast expanse of beach. Look closer--much closer--and your view of sand will never be the same. Employing the fantastic microphotographic techniques that he developed, Greenberg invites readers to discover the strange and wonderful world that each grain of sand contains. Here are the sands of Hawaii and Tahiti, the Sahara and the Poles, a volcano, each exquisitely different, and each telling a fascinating geological story. Red sand and yellow, white sand and black, singing sand and quicksand: Greenbergs pictures reveal the subtle differences in their colors, textures, sizes, and shapes. And as this infinitesimal world unfolds so does an intriguing explanation of how each grain of sand begins and forms and finds itself in a particular place, one of a billion and one of a kind.

Download or read book Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand written by Samuel R. Delany and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-15 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a truly galactic civilization with over 6,000 inhabited worlds.

Download or read book Sand and Foam written by Kahlil Gibran and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book of aphorisms, poems, and parables by the author of "The Prophet" - a philosopher at his window commenting on the scene passing below.

Download or read book The Secrets of Sand written by Gary Greenberg and published by Voyageur Press. This book was released on 2015-09-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beach to the moon--explore the incredible hidden world of sand, seen through a microscope. To the naked eye, the tiny particles that make up sand are less than inspiring. Under the microscope, however, it's a completely different story. Looking at sand under extreme magnification, we quickly find ourselves immersed in a new world of brilliant colors, organic shapes, and the stunning patterns of nature. Every grain of sand is a snapshot in time: Each grain originated somewhere and is headed somewhere else. Biogenic sands often contain fragments of the hard tissues from marine organisms such as shells, corals, sponges, sea urchins, forams, and bryozoans. When these organisms die, the hard tissues that are left behind erode into some of the most spectacular grains of sand imaginable. In this book, deep-focus microscope photography, x-ray images, and high-resolution scanning electron microscopy reveal their secrets. The Secrets of Sand is a virtual tour of sands from across North America. It shows their origins, the environmental forces that have acted upon them, and their journey from bedrock or invertebrate shell to the fine particles that, in countless billions, form our familiar beaches and dunes. It then moves on to an exploration of lunar sand, which has been formed under such alien conditions that it has no terrestrial counterpart. The Secrets of Sand is an amazing voyage of discovery in the ancient past--and the dynamic present--of the earth and our nearest neighbor.

Download or read book Aeolian Grain Transport Mechanics written by Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen and published by Springer. This book was released on 1991 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Grains of Sand written by Allen Scarbrough and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2004-08-01 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book of two line sayings on a variety of subjects.

Download or read book Aeolian Geomorphology written by Ian Livingstone and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-03-18 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revised introduction to aeolian geomorphology written by noted experts in the field The new, revised and updated edition of Aeolian Geomorphology offers a concise and highly accessible introduction to the subject. The text covers the topics of deserts and coastlines, as well as periglacial and planetary landforms. The authors review the range of aeolian characteristics that include soil erosion and its consequences, continental scale dust storms, sand dunes and loess. Aeolian Geomorphology explores the importance of aeolian processes in the past, and the application of knowledge about aeolian geomorphology in environmental management. The new edition includes contributions from eighteen experts from four continents. All the chapters demonstrate huge advances in observation, measurement and mathematical modelling. For example, the chapter on sand seas shows the impact of greatly enhanced and accessible remote sensing and the chapter on active dunes clearly demonstrates the impact of improvements in field techniques. Other examples reveal the power of greatly improved laboratory techniques. This important text: Offers a comprehensive review of aeolian geomorphology Contains contributions from an international panel of eighteen experts in the field Includes the results of the most recent research on the topic Filled with illustrative examples that demonstrate the advances in laboratory approaches Written for students and professionals in the field, Aeolian Geomorphology provides a comprehensive introduction to the topic in twelve new chapters with contributions from noted experts in the field.

Download or read book Grains of Sand in the Wind written by Francis Hartley IV and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To my readers: I hope that my last words and my last chapter have not yet been written. But the muse is an independent spirit. She visits me without warning and she is inclined to leave in the same way. My poems begin during my years at Yale University. Thereafter certain poems express reflections during my travels to many countries. A few poems I wrote in Spanish. They are followed by their English translations. Many later poems attempt to reveal the nature of Time. -Francis Hartley, IV "You have a gift for capturing moving insights in-exactly-the right amount and choice of words that, I think, would stir envy in many of the best-known writers in the history of this language... I have since worked hard to increase the density of my writing, in an attempt to come closer to the magnificent intensity and sense of mood, as well as oneness of "message and letter," which you can bring off with bewildering perfection." Niall MacKenzie Ottawa, Ontario "A fascinating American life expressed in poetry, 1962-2012." "Metaphors are drawn from nature, birds and animals, to illustrate the human condition." "Reflective and philosophical with elements of humor and wisdom."

Download or read book Tales from the Desert written by Roger A. Williams and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes a series of events occurring in the desert, often humorous, sometimes chaotic and even life-threatening, experienced by a boy and the man he became. The book also is well larded with science, lore and techniques for survival in the beautiful and often harsh desert environment. Growing up in Palm Springs a half-century ago, I was surrounded by celebrities. As a member of my high school tennis team in 1956, we were allowed to play at the world famous Racquet Club if we agreed to complete a foursome with guests when asked by the tennis professional. One day Marilyn Monroe needed a partner and I was chosen. On my first serve I hit my partner in the buttocks. Some say the ball goes where you were looking.

Download or read book Four Lives and a Grain of Sand written by Barbara Shriver and published by BookRix. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Izzy is a beautiful young girl who passed away with Cancer. Her only wish from life was to bring happiness to others. As her ashes are scattered on the beach, they touch four peoples lives, each searching for something. And miracles happen.

Download or read book A Field Guide to Cape Cod written by Patrick J. Lynch and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-02 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A richly illustrated full-color guide to the unique plants, wildlife, and environments of Cape Cod and the other nearby "Outer Lands" that face the Atlantic Ocean This essential guidebook presents the most abundantly illustrated and fascinating account of the natural history of Cape Cod, its nearby islands, Block Island, the western coast of Rhode Island, and southeastern Long Island ever published. Exploring the ecology and most common plants and animals of the various regional environments--beaches, dunes, salt marshes, heathlands, and coastal forests--the book also encompasses marine mammals, sea turtles, and fish offshore. For nature-loving local residents and visitors alike, this essential book will be a treasured resource.

Download or read book Grains of Sand written by Joseph Cidell and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-12-13 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A posthumous collection of free verse poems written by a Polish-American man living in Chicago and northwestern Indiana in the twentieth century