The sand in Barnegat Light was soft on your feet, and the magnified sample shows why: many of the grains were rounded. When you first walked onto the beach, just past the dunes, there were a lot ...

Meyerhoff said she took a small sample of the Orcas Island sand and mixed it in with the current beach grains. Though darker, it blended well, she said. Securing the sand.

Megaripples are sand waves with wavelengths in the metre range, between ordinary beach ripples (centimetres) and dunes (ten to 100 metres). They are commonly found on earth and Mars.