Judy Harmon., Age 9., Of Hughes Spring, Tex. for her question:

What chemicals are in sand:

To a chemist, sand is any hard. Mineral which comes in smalls gritty grains, just as gravel may be composed of sharps smallish stones of any mineral. Most of the golden sands along the beaches are made of the mineral named quartz which is the hardest of the common stones. Quartz is a compound of the chemical elements silicon and oxygen. Each molecule of silica contains two atoms of oxygen and one of silicon.

On many, coral islands the sands are made from limey which is mostly calcite. In some places the mineral gypsum has been powdered into sand. The dazzling white sands of white sands New Mexico, are mostly gypsum.