SEEING A WORLD IN A GRAIN OF SAND

In California, Glass Beach is a curious testament to nature's ability to compensate for being neglected by human beings. This site was once a sad, open-air dump where car bodies, appliances, broken glass, dishes, and more piled up until the authorities decided to clean it up in the 1960s. Scrap merchants salvaged the metal parts while waves made short work of dangerous glass and ceramic shards by breaking them into small pieces and gradually blunting them. A few decades later, this erosion has yielded multicolored sand that is popular among tourists.