Third Place Winner: From Beach Sand

Photo by Ellie Vilakazi, student, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

A researcher in the FAU Geoscience Department is working to find out how beach sand affects sea turtles. Sand samples are collected from beaches in Boca Raton all the way up to Jupiter. Samples are then brought back to the Coastal Studies Lab, put through several sieves, and weighed. The image above shows the next step which is to put the sand into a diluted hydrochloric acid solution in order to dissolve the calcium carbonate fraction (e.g., shells), a process that produces the bubbles seen here. The purpose of this step is to determine the relative mineral composition of the beach sand.