Sand Origins Lab

Introduction
Sand is composed of small bits of eroded rock or pieces of shell bone and coral.  Sand is classified into two major catagories, biogenic sand coming from living organisms and detrital sand wich originates from rock.  over time reef ecosystems die and thier remains erode into sand .  During storms or large swells large portions dead reefs or sand banks can be moved onto the beach or off swept downshore causing dramatic changes on the usable beach width.  One way to determine if sand is of biogenic or detrital origin is to use an acid viniger in this case to react with the calcium carbonate in the biogenic sand causing carbon dioxide water and calcium acitate.  'The reaction has a visble bubbling and the sound of popping can be heard.  If the sand is detrital then no reaction will happen when viniger is introduced.

Research Question
Is big beach of detrial origin, is black sand beach of detrital origin.
Hypothesis
I hypothosize that big beach  will be biogenic in orgin and black sand will be detrital in origin.
Prediction.
If big beach is biogenic then black sand will be detrital because it is the oppisite color.
Materials.
Cubs tape marker beaker pipet vineger van margraff saftey goggles data sheet glue. map of maui.
procedure
1.Drive to beach.       2. collect sand sample  3 label sand sample  4 reapet steps one through 3 at another beach.  5 test sand 6 record results. 7 glue sand sample on map.
DATA
From our testing we saw that thae sand from big beach had alot o chemical reaction when introduced to viniger.  There was bubbling and rising and an audible crackling sound emmited from the test beaker.  However the sand from black sand beach had significantly less reaction.  although the was a slight bubbling and a faint crackling sound the sand was clearly primarily composed of detrital particles.
Conclusion
I hypothosized that big beach would be biogenic and if it was that black sand would turn out to be the oppisite.  after anylizing the data i have found it consistant with my hypothesis.  The light yellowish sand from big beach was primarily biogenic, wich makes sense due to large sand deposits offshore and the constant south swell that makena is exopsed to.  The black sand beach on the other hand lies down current of prominent basalt and cinder cliffs which are probably the contributing factor to its detrial make up.  The trace amounts of biogenic sand found in blacksand beach are likley sweapt down from big beach via the strong currents running around the point twoards black sand.   some possible sources of error could be mislabling the sand samples.  subjectvly viewing the evidence and human error such as writing the wrong number or typos causing a flaw in data.

In this picture 1 stands for big beach research area 1 and 2 is bblack sand research area 2.  the yellow area represents sand deposits off shore of reaserch area one. the red arrow represents the direction of current and the blue shaded area is a section of the cinder cliffs that is greatly eroded. All of the things marked on the arial map were observed during field observations of the sights. or could haved been if i was there

 These pictures represent the research areas.  The top is big beach makena area 1 and the bottom is black sand beach makena area 2.