Thursday, November 19, 2009
White Sands, NM
On Saturday, Nov 14, we drove down to White Sands. Despite the fact that Tyler and Paula both grew up in the Texas Panhandle (Hereford and Levelland, respectively) and had visited Carlsbad Caverns several times, neither had been to White Sands. It's even more interesting now that Tyler has read up on some geology. The "sand" is not the usual quartz sand (which is crystalline silicon dioxide, from which ordinary glass is made). It is composed of small crystals of the mineral selenite, which is the crystalline form of gypsum, or hydrated calcium sulfate: CaSO4*H2O. You can read on the White Sands website how it is formed and how it collects into dunes. One consequence of the different chemical composition is that this sand is very much softer than quartz sand. I.e., quartz is quite abrasive, and will successfully scratch a wide variety of other materials, including ordinary car windshield glass and paint coatings. White selenite sand will not scratch much. Of course, you still don't want it in your socks!
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About Us
- Tyler B. and Paula M. Thompson
- Midland, Michigan, United States
- Tyler is a retired research scientist (PhD Chemistry, University of Illinois) who worked for The Dow Chemical Company. The last 16 years of his career he served as grants and contracts manager for Dow's External Technology program, involving Dow sponsored research grants to universities, government research contracts into Dow, and a variety of other industry/university/government research partnerships. Paula is a botanist with graduate work in plant taxonomy. She worked as a microbiology research assistant for four years while Tyler was in graduate school, then led a busy life raising 3 kids, gardening, and serving in a variety of church ministries and activities.
My goodness, you look just like Dad standing in front of the cabin!
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