If there was one place we’d rather be on a hot summer day, other than a well air conditioned room, it’s the beach. Palm trees, clear skies, pristine waters, and golden sands as far as the eye can see.
Or maybe white sands, orange, or black, or red, or even green. Beaches come in many shades. So what determines their colour, and the colour of sand in general?
The short answer is the geology of the region.
Sand is composed of fine particles formed when rocks and minerals are weathered down and eroded. In Hawaii or Iceland we find black sands formed by lava rocks like basalt. In other places we see red beaches because of the high iron content in the soil. Beyond rocks and soils, common ingredients are shells, corals or minerals like quartz that give the sand a pink or even pristine white hue.
Usually sand is a mixture of different types of minerals and rocks that make it brown or tan in colour but when we have a dominant or single source of formation, we may get quite vivid colours.
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