Have a Great One!

We're buried under a blizzard here, but my daughter and her husband are still getting in from California! I hope all of you who are reading this, whoever you are, have a great Holiday Season.

Clear Skies,

Charlie

Europe is Posted!

I am so jealous of the person who sent me the sand from Europe! Why couldn't my retirement be like that? Why couldn't I cruise to all of these neat islands? There, I've vented! At least I get to see the sand from them! I also fixed all of the Caribbean sites so that the sand samples have red lines, and they all have ISS images.

Clear Skies,

Charlie

I'm Back from the Left Coast!

Greetings! I'm back from California after visitiing my daughter and her husband in Los Angeles. I collected some great samples from Vasquez Rocks of Star Trek fame, and Red Rock Canyon and the more traditional Manhatten Beach and Paradise Cove. I went into work today and there was a package waiting for me from a teacher who just returned from Europe with samples from Spain and France! Keep up the great work people.

Have a Great Thanksgiving!

That about says it all!

Kiss the Bars Goodbye

I've decided to put a scale in each of the images rather than using the set of bars under the image. If anyone actually wants to measure the size of the grains, they will need a scale. This will be it. I've done Florida, Michigan, and Nevada. I'll do the rest when I get the time. The change will be slow and gradual.

Clear Skies,

Charlie

Wow! It's really been that long!

Good grief! I haven't posted in an age! Samples are still coming in at a great clip. If you go to the "Latest Arrivals" link you will find some truly incredible images. I still can't solve the problem of why the title boxes disappear. I can get them back by changing one little thing on EACH page and resending it, but that's geting just a little long. The only thing I know is that the upload freezes when I add images to a new page. But the real big news . . . for those of you who belong to NSTA and get Science Scope, go to page 92. I will say no more.

Clear Skies,

Charlie

I was right . . .

. . . the samples are things of beauty! The Montana folks sent me samples from Brazil, Malaysia, South Africa, Cuba, etc. Just go to the "Just Arrived" pages and see for yourself. In addition, I have my first really great essay from a fellow X-teacher who went to Sand Dunes National Park. Be sure you go to Colorado, and check out that incredible page. In addition to that a box of samples arrived from a fellow collector right here in Massachusetts. I also had to move off the three-season porch and set up in the dining room. It's dark in here! My exposures are running almost 45 seconds. At a local "Junk Store" I found a setup for taking pictures of items that were to be posted to on-line auctions. I bought a set of the lights, and I'm not sure about the results yet. The exposure time is way down, but the images are very warm. More to follow.

Too many samples to count!

It was a great week. Two people from my Montana class sent me cartons of samples! One set is all foreign, so there will be some really neat "Just Arrived" images over the next couple of weeks. Also two of my school friends just returned from trips. The California samples are already posted, and Nevada is going to be next week's state of the week. The sample is fantastic! I centered on what I think could be a fossil bone. The sample was loaded with bits and pieces of tiny critters!

Clear Skies,

Charlie

Suddenly it hit me!

I've been anguishing over images for these pages. I have a few myself, and several of the people have sent stuff, buy most don't. As I scour the sites I find some great images, but they all MAY have a copywrite, so that involves sending an e-mail to the photographer asking for permission. Then it hit me, I'm doing this project with NASA on the International Space Station and how to use the images taken by the astronauts (duh!) As a defaulI'm going to post an ISS or Shuttle image to the page with a link back to the Gateway to Astronaut Photography page showing the origin and statistics on the image.

Clear Skies,

Charlie

My Biggest Fear - Florida!

A sample arrived from Tampa today. I lived in fear of someone sending me one from Tampa because I am staring at 49 samples of my own! I will NEVER get this done this week. I'm actually working three days! Wish me luck as I slug through a few a day. The sample came with an interesting note. The person who sent the sand told me that it actually was Tampa sand. Apparently most sand in Florida is actually shipped in from the Bahamas. Now there's an interesting piece of trivia! All seriousness aside - thank you Jessica from Tampa!

Clear Skies,

Charlie

Campabello at Sunrise

I'm sorry, I just had to say that! Most of you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. I just received some sand from Campabello Island in Maine/Canada. A book about FDR was titled "Sunrise at Campabello." Sand is history. In some cases it tlls the story of what happened to the planet. In other cases it's the story of the people who walked across it. Did FDR look across this little patch of sand that I now have? What horrible even took place over the sand I have from Normany's Omaha Beach?

California Sand

One of my daughter's friends sent me pictures, but no sand, from a great site north of San Francisco, so I cheated and used that as my gateway to enter California Sand images. There are a ton! The California coast is so different from the east coast. My daughter lives in Los Angeles now, so we get a chance to visit a couple of times a year. We have only felt safe going into the water in one location there - Paradise Cove in Malibu. Paridise Cove is like going back in time. The restaurant located right on the beach is something right out of the 1950's! There are pictures on the wall of all the famous folks who have eaten there. Classic pictures of classic cars that weren't classic when they were taken, are joined by images of people smiling with huge fish! The rocks that make up the cliff backing the beach are spectacular! They are sedimentary layers, but the layers are vertical. As you walk along the beach, the layers begin to flatten to the horizontal again. It is truly anamazing spot. Thank you Christa, I wanted to photograph my California sand.

A Perfect Evening

So I'm sitting in my living room watching Ken Burns' second episode on the National Parks and the telephone rings. The voice on the other end is filled with excitement. It's my retired buddy Jerry calling from Colorado to tell me where he has collected samples for me. There's sand from a parkinglot in Kansas, and from inside dinosaur foot prints in Colorado. He is driving from Massachusetts out to Monument Valley collecting sand from approved places along the way. See you when you get back Big Guy. I'll make a special page of your trip!

Clear Skies, Safe Journey,

Charlie

The Wara Formation

I just posted my most unusual sand sample. It was given to me by a person I had as a student teacher MANY years ago. We went to the same college, UMass Boston, took the same courses, and had the same profs. He was a great teacher, and really wanted to be one, but there weren't any jobs. In fact, people were losing their jobs because of a new tax restructuring program called "2 1/2" where taxes could not be raised more than that percentage each year. As a result, jobs were lost. He answered an ad in the Boston Globe from a Texas oil company. He responded, got the job, and discovered it was in Saudi Arabia! He was 22, so he decided to give it a try. You lived for four weeks at the drill site, then they gave you the price of a first class round trip ticket home for two weeks. He never went home! Instead, he traveled the world on the cheap! Everytime he came home, which was rare, he laways brought me sand samples from where he had been. The strangest was from the drill site. This was sand that was created by the drill at 2,000 ft down! He also brought me back a section of a drill core. He stayed in Saudi for two two-year tours, then he was allowed to pick his spot anyplace else in the world. I lost track of him, so I don't know where he went. I shared this story with my students for probably close to 30 years.

Clear Skies,

Charlie

The "X" Factor

Okay, I think I've figured out what the 1 - 5X on the macro lens actually represent in magnifications, but I could be wrong. I took a picture of one of the samples that had an obvious object (a lump of white, organic material) in it. I placed the white object as close to the center as I could using the grid on the viewfinder and took a "gross" image. Then I switched to the macro and took a 1X - 5X series of images placing the organic material at the center. Then I looked at each of the images in GIMP and measured the length of the white object in pixels and calculated the magnitude of the change in pixels as the magnification. I hope that's right. If you go to the "Photography" page you can see all of the images with a spiffy red border around the edge to show the actual coverage of 1X-5X.

Clear Skies,

Charlie

Maui and New Brunswick are Done!

I finally finished all of the samples for those two places. The librarian also brought me 20+ pounds of sand! I have most of it cleaned and labeled. This week is Maine. I have a sample from Wells Beach, so that will go up almost immediately. Hopefully I'll get some images and a story from the nice folks. I'm taking a course on Systems Science via Montana State. One of the participants is from Alaska, and she lives right on a delta. Hopefully she'll send me some silt!

Clear Skies,

Charlie

Maui and New Brunswick

I'm just a tad overwhelmed! I went into my old high school today to pick up the sand samples from our librarian from Maui and New Brunswick. She calls me into her office and produces two incredible posters on posterboard! There's a map on each poster, and zip lock bags of sand are arranged around the maps. Then there also are zip lock bags containing what I first thought were images showing the signs leading to each beach, but NO they are entire SETS of images from each beach! Then she gives me the real surprise - a 20-pound trashbag filled with class sized samples of sand from each of the different beaches! We're talking eleven beaches in all - three in Maui, and eight in New Brunswick! This is great! Thank you so much Kathy!

Massachusetts is Done!

And I think it looks great! I had to enter the names of the locations in 8 point font to include the latitude and longitude and have the thumbnails show up the way I wanted, but I think that's important. The thumbnails now show as a continuous column, before there was a break. I also received two samples from Canada, and added them to the list. Prince Edward Island must be such a beautiful place! The sand is the deepest red. I was also sent a few rock samples. Maybe I'll add images of them to the page. The librarian at my old high school tells me that she has sand from Maui and New Brunswick for me. She gets around. I was going to pick it up today, but I actually got a call to sub. Maybe tomorrow.

My Virtual Trip to the Cape

Wednesdays are breakfast days for retired teachers in my town. As many as possible from my middle school gather at one of two diners on alternate weeks. One of our members was thrilled with the sand project, and asked if I wanted sand from Budapest. Of course I want sand from Budapest! Her daughter is going there next week. One of our other members is leaving on a cross-country (almost) trip, and brought 25 centrifuge tubes with him for collecting samples. Since Massachusetts was the first state to send sand, I decided to go through my collection and do Massachusetts. Almost all of the samples that my students have brought in are from Cape Cod. So yesterday I got to take a trip to the Cape, and added a number of samples to the Massachusetts map. The map looks great in Internet Explorer. When you click on the little image to bring up the 3X image, they look best in Phoenix. Firefox is a real problem. The large images break down. I still haven't solved the problem of showing the essays in Phoenix or Firefox. The text is lost in the table format I'm using.

I also heard from a teacher from New Mexico today, who is going to send some samples. That's great!

Clear Skies,

Charlie

First Day of School

Everyone warned me about yesterday. Apparently the first day that everyone goes back and you don't is tough. It wasn't! Two of my friends and I went for an early morning walk on Long Beach in Plymouth, Massachusetts. We hit it just at low tide, and it was spectacular. I had a retired earth science teacher, and a life science person who is "between jobs" with me. Long Beach really lives up to its name. The beach is huge. It was also empty! As we walked I gave a running geology lesson, and received a life science lesson. I brought back samples of bryozans on kelp that looked incredible when photographed at 3X. I also decided to create a features page for the website, highlighting different features found in sand. So, if you go to "Massachusetts" there's a new dot for Long Beach in Plymouth, and there also is a "Sand Features" page with one of the strangest rills I've ever seen.

I am Ready!

It's been a while, but I finally sent out a general e-mail message to NSTA General, MSS and Middletalk advertising the experiment. People immediately e-mailed back asking where to send the sand. This was not good! The site told them where to send it! I went into the site using Phoenix and saw the problem. Anything enclosed in a table lost all of its text. The problem - all of my pages are enclosed in tables! So my once beautiful site now looks crude. Hopefully we can fix that. I also bought a great copy stand from a friend to use to take the 3X images. At 3X the depth of field is < a mm! Therefore everything must be perfect so that no section of the image becomes a blur. Only time will tell if I've solved this problem.

Welcome to the Project!

I recently saw Julie and Julia with my wife, and was stricken by the similarity in my life and Julie's. After 42 years of teaching, I will retire. My life needed direction as did Julie's. She decided to cook all of the items in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. I could never do that, so I decided to attempt my version of it. Inspired by William Blake's line in his poem Auguries of Innocence, " To see a world in a grain of sand . . . " I want to collect samples of sand from all 50 states and territories (and beyond) in one year, and post their stories to a website. Check in here for weekly updates on my progress.