alt Hacker NewsOne thing that surprised me when I started running a tugboat business: A country can be both an exporter and importer of sand. Sand of one type goes from the U.S. to The Bahamas to be used in concrete. Sand of another type goes from The Bahamas to the U.S. to be used in aquariums. Specialty sands go to make regulation volleyball courts.
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Indeed!
Then there is all kinds of specialty sands - say, when replacing the sand in our local athletics union long jump pits, I learned that one should use sand from river beds (as opposed to sand crushed at a plant) as the river sand is much less likely to cause abrasions, seeing as all the sharp edges have been worn away as the sand has been shifted back and forth by the river current...
Sand is not just sand.
> A country can be both an exporter and importer of sand.
That's pretty normal in general. Eg Germany both imports and exports a lot of cars.
Trade is a technology that turns concrete sand into aquarium sand.
While not sand, I remember reading about the state of Colorado importing specialty dirt from around the world while constructing I-70 through the Rockies. Various properties were required that couldn’t be found from local dirt.
Yeah but there is going to be a massive imbalance in the quantity of those two types of sand. I bet the sand required for aquariums is a rounding error on the amount of sand required for concrete.
Just marveling as an old school computer programming geek that I happen to be in a forum that also includes someone in the tugboat business.