Raw materials and art – 41. Sand and Degas

2023-09-04 09:49:36

Switzerland is a hub for commodity trading. Did you know that this activity represents 4% of Swiss GDP, and even 22% of tax revenue for the canton of Geneva. This week, we are talking about sand. We will see why sand is so important.

This gives us the opportunity to admire the painting ofEdgar Degas (1834–1917) : Sea bathing, little girl combed by her maid, by Edgar Degas. exhibited The National Gallery (United Kingdom, London)

Why is sand so important?

Sand influences the Earth’s geography and climate. It is also the most exploited material: it is used in particular to make houses.

And that’s not all, What saved us from the ice ages, which hides more life than the Amazon rainforest and which is at the origin of a trade of 70 billion dollars? Answer: sand. And what gave birth to mathematics, computers, glass, concrete and our planet? Always sand.

This impalpable matter, on which we rest in summer, influences us more than we imagine: “Sand is one of the main actors of life on Earth”, explains Michael Welland, British geologist.

In Vince Beiser’s investigative book, “Everything in a Grain.” It tells how sand has transformed the history of civilization.

Sand, summarizes the author, “represents for cities what flour represents for bread, what cells represent for our body: it is the invisible, but fundamental ingredient, which forms the heart of the environment. city in which most of us live”.

Where does this precious resource come from? Sand is mined from riverbeds, lakes, sea beds and land quarries. Unlike oil, sand is a resource that can be found almost anywhere, but its extraction often causes considerable damage to ecosystems: aquatic fauna, terrestrial flora and the human population are already paying the bill for the incessant extraction.

At the root of all this, there is a question of supply and demand. The supply of sand that can be extracted from the ground in a sustainable way is limited, but the demand is not.

Today, the demand for sand is such that riverbeds and beaches around the world are being emptied of their precious grains. Farmlands and forests are being destroyed and with them entire communities and species are threatened.

Sand has been important for centuries and millennia. It has been used for construction since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians. In the XV^th century, Venetian artisan Angelo Barovier discovered how to turn sand into transparent glass, which produced microscopes, telescopes and other technologies that contributed to the scientific revolution of the Renaissance.

However, it was not until the advent of the modern industrialized world, in the decades before and after the end of the 20th^th century, that we began to manufacture transparent glass.

sand in mathematics

More than 2,200 years ago, Archimedes grasped the link between sand and mathematics: he called theArena a treatise on large numbers.

To demonstrate that they can extend to infinity, he calculated how many grains would fill the celestial sphere: approximately 1063.

The abacus is the first calculator, which derives from the Phoenician abak, “sand”. It was a tablet on which sand and stones were placed.

How did an inventor get the idea for the barcode?

In 1952, American engineer Norman Woodland invented the barcode

It was on a beach that Norman Joseph Woodland came up with the idea for this device, which now makes it possible to identify products in supermarkets and warehouses around the world.

He traced parallel lines on the sand with his fingers.

Familiar with Morse code, he then thought of replacing the dots and dashes with bars of different thicknesses.

You can also make art with sand. In Tibet, drawings in the sand (mandalas) guide meditation; when they are finished, they are destroyed, because everything is ephemeral.

This gives us the opportunity to admire a painting ofEdgar Degas (1834–1917) Sea bathing, little girl combed by her maid, exhibited at The National Gallery (United Kingdom, London

In the same series, “Raw materials and art”: