The White Sands of Punta Cana EarthCache
The White Sands of Punta Cana
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Punta Cana: Roughly translated, it means “The White End”. That is exactly what it looks like due to its soft, fine WHITE sand. Famous for its beautiful white sandy beaches that draws so many tourists to its shores.
Sand is usually made up of fine rock particles. Sand is a naturally occurring, finely divided rock, comprising particles or granules ranging in size from 0.0625 (or 1⁄16 mm) to 2 millimeters. An individual particle in this range size is termed a sand grain. The next smaller size class in geology is silt while next larger size class above sand is gravel. The composition of sand varies according to local rock sources and conditions. The bright white sands found in tropical and subtropical coastal settings are ground-up limestone also known as coral sand. Coral sand is sand of particles originating in tropical and sub-tropical marine environments from bioerosion of limestone skeletal material of marine organisms. One example of this process is that of parrot fishes which bite off pieces of coral, digest the living tissue, and excrete the inorganic component as silt and sand. However, the term "coral" in coral sand is used loosely in this sense to mean limestone of recent biological origin; corals are not the dominant contributors of sand particles to most such deposits. Rather, remnant skeletal fragments of foraminifera, calcareous algae, mollusks, and crustaceans can predominate. Because it is composed of limestone, coral sand is acid-soluble. Sand is commonly divided into five sub-categories based on size: very fine sand (1/16 - 1/8 mm), fine sand (1/8 mm - 1/4 mm), medium sand (1/4 mm - 1/2 mm), coarse sand (1/2 mm - 1 mm), and very coarse sand (1 mm - 2 mm). These sizes are based on the Φ sediment size scale, where size in Φ = -log base 2 of size in mm. On this scale sand is from Φ = -1 to 4, with the divisions between sub-categories at whole numbers. To log this cache you must fulfill the following requirements to prove you were there: 1. What "resort" beach do the co-ordinates take you to? 2. Based on the size scale of sand. Estimate what sub-category does the sand of this beach fall into? 3. What is the name of this beach? 4. Estimate the weight of one cup of “DRY” sand from this beach 5. Take a picture of your geocache name written in the sand with your GPS, 6. Take a second picture of yourself holding your GPS with the resort in the background.
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