January 9, 2012

The Beauty Of A Simple Grain Of Sand

So today, I'm going to willfully ignore all the strum and drang of the New Hampshire primary and presidential politics in general and take a look at something you've probably never seen before; a single grain of sand.  The image here is of different grains of sand from different beaches, magnified more than 300x by a special microscope. These beautiful reminders of the uniqueness of each grain were taken by a former medical research scientist who moved to Hawaii and now takes pictures of sand and other natural wonders under his microscope.

His name is Dr. Gary Greenberg and since 2001, he has been making these remarkable images from his 3-D light microscope (which he holds a number of patents on).  I read about him in the current issue of Coastal Living magazine, which talks about his unusual journey from science to art. You can look at more of these images of sand on his website.  Who knew that each grain of sand was so unique and remarkable, a record in a way of thousands of years of biological and geological history. Something to ponder on a chilly Monday in January...

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