Numbers in the News: Sand, Sand Everywhere

This past Sunday NPR's Weekend Edition interviewed Vince Beiser about his new book The World in a Grain. During the interview, Beiser made a mind-boggling claim. If you take all the sand used commercially every year, all 50 billion tons of it, you would have enough sand to cover the state of California.To which Californians might ask: "Well, how deep are we talking?" California, after we cover it in sand.Image Credit:via Unsplash To answer this question, there's a few things we need to find out ...