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by aet 4784 days ago
Melting point of sand (silicon dioxide, or Quartz): 1723 C. So what material is the coin in the example?
2 comments

I'd wondered that too. Also wondered how transparent the glass would be: assuming the point would be rapid mass heating of the desert/beach in question a la nuclear weapon, the lack of material purity and uncontrolled heating would result in pretty poor glass, likely opaque. Trinitite isn't clear.

Even if P=NP, some problems still take a whole lotta work to solve, and "shortcuts" aren't much faster.

Don't you see? Finding the coin is easy. Changing the sand to glass and finding the coin is trivial.
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