Glen Mackie, coastal geologist, estimates that there are something like 10²³ grains of sand on the beaches of Earth. Meanwhile, Avogadro defined a mole as a unit of quantity equal to the number of atoms in 12g of ground-state carbon-12, approximately the number of atoms in a cubic centimetre of ideal gas - and it happens to be about 6x10²³. In other words, having a mole of stuff is shorthand for having 6.02214199447x10²³ bits of stuff. It's hard to have that much of anything unless the stuff in question is atomic-scale stuff and so, apart from using it to beat homeopaths over the head, I thought Avogadro's number had no real-world equivalent. But if Glen is right then we may have, just lying about where anyone can look at it, a mole of sand. I'm inordinately pleased about that. (inspiration[62])