School of Environmental Sciences Sand grains A Powerpoint about sand grains. This PowerPoint illustrates some of the modern day environments where sand grains are deposited today, explains how to describe sand grains and shows how your observations may be used to work environments of deposition. A pdf document of this Power point about sand grains is available here. This is a collection of photographs illustrating sands deposited in different environments. (Click on an image to enlarge it)   These photographs were taken using a Leica EZ4 D stereo-microscope (with integral Leica EC3 digital camera). For each pair of images the first image is shown with a scale.  The second image is a stacked image created using Combine ZP software and based on a series of photographs taken on the Leica EZ4 D. Compare the photographs in each pair of images. What is the main advantage of having stacked images of these sand samples? Study the four images below and for each describe the grain shape and sorting. Identify the following grains in these sands: shell fragments, mica grains, feldspar grains, grains of basalt,other lithic grains. Photographs were taken by work experience students from local schools working in Earth and Ocean Sciences.