7/5/20 Report - Waves, Liquifaction and Sand Movement on The Beach. NHC Map Lighting Up. Access to Technology and Data.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Wave Photo by Clark Little Photography

Source: clarklittlephotography.com.

Although it seems like coins and rings and things sink in the sand, they don't sink in undisturbed dry sand without some disturbance of the sand.  You can easily prove that for yourself.  Just take a bowl or container of sand and place a coin or ring on top of it.  You can come back days later and clearly see that the item did not sink.

When you say a object sinks in sand, that seems to me to imply gravity as the primary force, which is misleading because the sand has to move to allow the object to "sink."  Maybe to you that is not an important distinction, and I can accept that, but for me, I'd rather place more emphasis on what has to happen with the sand.  That is what we have to know more about in order to be able to explain how an object will sink at the beach.

Clark Little takes amazing photographs of waves, like the one shown above.  If you visit ClarkLittlePhotography.com you'll see many great photos.

The above photo, besides being beautiful, shows some very interesting things.  Notice the brown area that the person is standing in.  There is brown all around the person, and there is also a brown vertical column in front of the camera.

The brown around in front of the wave shows that a lot of sand has been suspended by the turbulence.  And the brown vertical column, shows how sand has been picked up into the wave.  It seems clear that a lot of sand is being moved in that photo.

We don't often see a wave that big on the Treasure Coast, but the same thing happens with smaller waves, though to a lesser extent.  On the Treasure Coast we don't get waves like that, but the waves we do get will do the same thing - move sand.  And sometimes the waves do get pretty big.

Here is another great photo by Clark Little.  Once again, you can see the sand being sucked up into the wave.

Photograph by Clark Little.

Source: ClarkLittlePhotography.com.

As I've said many times, different materials and objects require different amounts of water force to move.  With a waves shown in these photographs a lot more than sand could be moved.

Here is an interesting explanation from Wikipedia explaining how sand fleas bury themselves.

Emerita is adept at burrowing, and is capable of burying itself completely in 1.5 seconds. Unlike mud shrimp,  Emerita burrows tail-first into the sand, using the periopods to scrape the sand from underneath its body. During this action, the carapace is pressed into the sand as anchorage for the digging limbs.   The digging requires the sand to be fluidised by wave action, and Emerita must bury itself in the correct orientation before the wave has passed to be safe from predators.

As the tides changes, Emerita changes its position on the beach; most individuals stay in the zone of breaking waves. This may be detected by the physical characteristics of the sand. As the tide falls, the sand is allowed to settle; when Emerita detects this, it uses the temporary liquefaction from a breaking wave to emerge from its burrow, and is carried down the beach by the wave action. Longshore drift also drag Emerita laterally along a beach.

Crashing waves cause liquification of the sand.  It burrows into the liquified sand, which settles when the tide recedes.

When you are talking about objects sinking into the sand, a number of things are going on.  Like I said above, it requires some disturbance of the sand.  In some cases that disturbance might be little more than sand moving away, while the denser objects remain.  When the sand is liquified, denser objects can actually sink into the sand, but that requires special conditions.  It does not happen unless the sand is being disturbed in one way or another.

In the near future, I plan to discuss some of the other variables and forces pertaining to how objects sink or appear to sink into sand.

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Neural networks and AI could be a lot of help to the treasure hunter, but it would require a lot of research and development work, and access to the technology and data. For me the most valuable thing about going through years of higher education was access to technologies, labs and data.  I could  have done without the classes and lectures.  In fact, the thing in education that probably changed my life the most was discovering computers in 1969.

I started with batch processing, which involved punching computer instructions on punch cards, which were then submitted to the computer center.  You'd go back to the computer center in a day or two to get the output (you think your computer is slow).  As often as not, what you got was a listing of the many errors in your program that had to be identified and corrected before submitting the program again and waiting another day for the output.

I'll never forget the day I discovered a teletype machine that allowed me to use interactive BASIC to enter programs.  You'd hit a key and wait about two seconds before seeing the character typed on the computer paper on the teletype in front of you.  The delay in response took some getting used to but it was miles ahead of batch processing.  You know the rest - personal computers and then the internet.

If the general population had access to the most advanced technologies and data, progress would be accelerated many times.  If people had access to the raw data and information, there would be all kinds of genius geeks looking at the data.

A lot of things are accomplished by amateurs despite the barriers.  That is very true with archaeology.  Professionals have their own domain to protect and they seldom appreciate the talent that is sitting out there in the world.  Did you ever get a job when you were way beyond the person that would be your boss?  It won't happen.

In a very rare event about a week ago, a reporter actually asked a follow up question of Dr. Fauci, that elicited some useful information.  Dr. Fauci had mentioned in a very general way that something wasn't working, and the reporter asked what that was. Whoooaa - a reporter actually doing their job. Dr. Fauci said that contact tracing wasn't working because certain populations weren't responding to the calls.  In a moment of unguarded candor, he described those populations, but I won't.   I knew that very useful information was too politically incorrect to ever be mentioned in public again.  It wasn't.

Do you realize that a lot of the people at the top of the health agencies have been there longer than Moses wandered the wilderness?

The point I'm making is that the public only gets filtered information at best.  I'd love to see more good data put out there for the public to access.  Just yesterday I noticed a TCPalm headline that said something like 80% of corona cases are from minority populations.  I found some demographic breakdowns on the Florida Dept. of Health site and their numbers suggested nothing like that headline.

I don't do Facebook or Twitter.  I'm not much interested in the party line, the slogans, mantras, talking points or retweeted retweets.

I do very much like the idea of using neural networks and AI for contact tracing, but am personally more interested in tracing ideas and treasures than viruses, although that would be fun too if the data collection was more systematic and well defined.

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Source: nhc.noaa.gov

Seems like the National Hurricane Center map is becoming a little more active.  Maybe we'll get some nice waves someday before long.

Tropical wave five is moving away from us and there is another area that has a small chance of developing in the next couple of days.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

3/12/19 Report - Internet Tool For Identifying Civil War Soldiers From Old Photos. Genealogical Research. Slightly Increasing Surf.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

 Source:  PopularMechanics link shown below.

A computer science professor has built a tool that could allow people to identify Civil War veterans in their families with the help of artificial intelligence.

Kurt Luther, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, developed a platform called Photo Sleuth after he discovered a picture of a distant relative who had fought in the Civil War...


The Civil War Photo Sleuth project launched in August 2018 as a web-based platform at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Users can upload photos, tag them with visual clues – such as the color of a coat, shoulder straps, collar insignia, or inscriptions – and connect them to profiles of Civil War soldiers with more detailed records of military service...

Here is the link for that article sent to me by William K.  Thanks William!

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/ai-could-help-identify-civil-war-veterans-in-your-family

A Popular Mechanics article on the subject describes how it works.

The Photo Sleuth works like this. First, a user signs up for free. Then they upload Civil War-era photos, front and back to discourage the use of mere printouts. Then they tag the photo with visual cues: What is their collar insignia? How many chevrons does their uniform have? And, perhaps the most important, North or South?

Here is that link.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a26625006/civil-war-photo-sleuth-search/

In the past I've encouraged you to research your own family history, and when possible visit the locations that were occupied by you or your ancestors in the past and dig up some pieces that you or your family lost.  I was able to dig up some of my toys from the 1950s, for example, and a few rings and other things belonging to me and my family.

I've also been able to detect the house where a couple generations of my wife's family lived and found some nice old things.

It is now possible to learn a lot about your family and your ancestors by using tools that are freely available on the internet.

My wife has become skilled at genealogical research.  Her family goes back to Europe and she is now in communication of extended family overseas.  She has discovered some very interesting stories too, involving wars and family members who died in Nazi concentration camps.

When my grandmother got the documentation she needed to become a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, she was able to document one ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War.  Since my wife has been doing genealogical research on the internet, she has run across about a half dozen of my ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War.  Some were more direct lines than the one my grandmother was able to find.

The same tools that can be used for genealogical research can also be used to find clues to good metal detecting sites.  I've heard some say how difficult it is to get permission to detect on land sites.  When you have a family connection, that might be a bit easier.  I know when I visited the place that I grew up after it was sold, the new owner knowing that I grew up there was very hospitable.

My wife highly recommends the following internet sites.

The best one is www.familysearch.org.  It is run by the Later Day Saints and is free.  You will have to create an account.  And of course, like anything, you might have to spend a little time learning to use it.

Another one she uses a lot is www.findagrave.com.  It is also free.  When you look up grave, you will also find helpful additional information about the person.

Ancestry.com is not free, but they do permit a free preview period.  If you know what you are after you can sign up for the preview period and do your research, and then continue with a paid subscription if you like.  You can save the family trees and stuff that you develop during the free preview.

While I have a lot of old photos, I do not have showing Civil War soldiers.  Too bad.  I know some of my ancestors were in the Civil War and one was injured at Gettysburg.

Very often you'll be able to find the pension applications filed by the widow.

Here is an old photo that shows my grandfather (middle) and his sister and brother.  That was when taking a photo was a big deal.

No particular reason other than I think it is very cute.

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Anyone want to send me a personal story or comments on the recently completed TCAS hunt?  I'd like to hear from you.

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So now the FBI now saving us from college admissions cheating.  Now I feel safe and am so relieved that that the college admissions process is totally fair for the first time in the last hundred years. No more legacy admissions, preferences for wealthy donors, college prep schools or SAT prep programs.

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We are expecting a three to five foot surf on the Treasure Coast.  Also moderate tides.  The wind is now coming from the north and some cooler air is moving in.

I don't expect to be able to take a look for a couple of days.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

3/23/18 Report - How To Be Successful With Metal Detecting. Robotics and AI. Surf Coming Next Week.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Very Capable Robot.
Source: qz.com link below.

I copied the following three paragraphs from a book.  I did that because it says almost exactly what I've been saying for several years now.  

The answer is that the successful detectorist is the one who invests a maximum amount of time exploring - he's out there, looking.  Beyond that, he actually cares, in a human sense, about nature, because he cares he keeps his eyes open and does his best to understand what he sees and fit it into some kind of conceptual framework.  His framework may be totally wrong, but in creating and using it he sharpens his ability to recognize and classify what he sees.

Because he's out there looking, the odds are that he'll eventually stumble over an important clue of one sort or another.  Because he's been thinking as well as looking he's apt to recognize that clue for what it is.

Chance, as the historians of science sum it up, favors the prepared mind.  The odds are overwhelmingly against the prepared detectorist making any particular discovery...  but it's a forgone conclusion that he'll discover something.

If you remember my formula for success, time on task is one of the top two determining factors.  That isn't too surprising, but time isn't the only factor, and the above paragraphs make that clear.  Time by itself isn't enough.  There is also careful attention, or looking, and thinking.

By trying to figure things out and put it all into a theory, even though your theory might not be totally accurate, it, as the other author says, "sharpens your ability to recognize and classify."  When you have a theory, observations either fit in or they don't.  When they don't, you have to take that into a account somehow, and that can mean improving your theory.

I actually played a little trick.  The excerpts were written about the successful scientist - not detectorist.  I just changed a few words.

Here are the paragraphs as they appeared in the book.  The red words are the only words that I changed.  Basically, I changed the word "scientist" to "detectorist."

The answer is that the successful scientist  is the one who invests a maximum amount of time exploring the branch of nature he's studying - he's out there, looking.  Beyond that, he actually cares, in a human sense, about nature, because he cares he keeps his eyes open and does his best to understand what he sees and fit it into some kind of conceptual framework.  His framework may be totally wrong, but in creating and using it he sharpens his ability to recognize and classify what he sees.

Because he's out there looking, the odds are that he'll eventually stumble over an important clue of one sort or another.  Because he's been thinking as well as looking he's apt to recognize that clue for what it is.

Chance, as the historians of science sum it up, favors the prepared mind.  The odds are overwhelmingly against the prepared scientist making any particular discovery...  but it's a forgone conclusion that he'll discover something.

Discoveries are discoveries and successful people are successful people.  Most of the same things apply, whether it is science or treasure hunting.

There was one more thing that I found in this book that helps me say something I've tried to say in the past.  There is a difference between knowing something and really knowing that thing.

The author of the book I took the paragraphs from, Jon Franklin, used the example of E=MC squared.  That is something that everybody has heard, and they might even say they knew that, but what the heck does it really mean?  Not so many people can tell you what it really means.  And not too many people really understand it.

When you see a statement that is boiled down into a simple clear statement, people will usually say, "I knew that," but that doesn't mean they really understand it, recognize it when they see it in the field, and know how to use it.  There is a vast difference between feeling like you know something and really understanding it.  For it to be of much use you have to understand it enough that you can recognize it at work in nature and then make use of it.  What might appear obvious, might also have a much deeper significance and value.

The next time you hear something that seems obvious, you might ask yourself if you really understand it and all of the implications.  Ask yourself if you have applied or tested all the implications in the field.

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You will know that we are in trouble when the robots start taking selfies.

Here is a good article for keeping up with technology (See top photo).

https://qz.com/1234822/inside-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-private-mars-conference-for-a-new-golden-age/

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The 3/10 post showing a short video of the Garrett Ace 250 and how it responded to three different one-cent coins was the most popular post of the month.  I wasn't expecting that.  Maybe I should make more videos.

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The weather has been beautiful for being outdoors.  And the surf has been small and easy to work.

It looks like next week the surf will increase again.  Maybe that will help.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net