"You can get out using this technique, if you do it slowly and progressively. This creates a space between the legs and the quicksand through which water can flow down to dilate the sand," he explained. "The way to do it is to wriggle your legs around. So how do you get out? Don't ask your friends to tug on you they're likely to pull you "into two pieces if try hard to pull out," said Bonn, a physics professor at the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute at the University of Amsterdam. "I would say there would be some pressure on the chest, but not enough to cause serious trouble." Evil characters in movies drowned in quicksand. Crystal and another lady both submerged in that video. If you grew up in the 1980s or ’90s, you might fear quicksand. And unfortunately the computer and the backup drive I had it on both crashed within a week of each other. If you do step into quicksand, says study co-author Daniel Bonn, you'll only sink in a little deeper than your waist. Quicksand is not the fearsome geological feature movies have made it out to be. The authors estimate that the force needed for someone to pull their foot out of quicksand at a speed of a centimeter a second would be the equivalent of that required to lift a medium-size car. Water has to be introduced into the sand sediment to loosen it, and this requires considerable amounts of force. It's the difficulty of moving this dense sand that causes the problem. The increase is due to the formation of sand sediment, which has a very high viscosity. Difficult to Get Out Ofīut if quicksand becomes less viscous as you struggle, why is it so difficult to escape? The reason, explain the study's authors, is that after its initial liquefaction, quicksand's apparent viscosity (thickness or flow resistance) increases. But when they shook the container a bit harder, the ball descended to the bottom. When they shook it only a little, the bead stayed floating on top. At rest, the bead remained on the surface, despite aluminum's higher density.īut then scientists started shaking the container. But a piece of aluminum will float on top of quicksand until motion causes the sand to liquefy.ĭuring their study, researchers placed an aluminum bead on top of a container of laboratory-created quicksand. Aluminum, for example, has a density of about 2.7 grams per milliliter. You would descend about up to your waist, but you'd go no further.Įven objects with a higher density than quicksand will float on it-until they move. At that level of density, sinking in quicksand is impossible. Most likely, if you fall in, you will float to the surface. But human density is only about 1 gram per milliliter. However, the sand-to-water ratio of quicksand can vary, causing some quicksand to be less buoyant. It may be possible to drown in quicksand if you were to fall in over your head and couldnt get your head back above the surface, although its rare for quicksand to be that deep. Quicksand has a density of about 2 grams per milliliter. However, the sand-to-water ratio of quicksand can vary, causing some quicksand to be less buoyant.
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