The most common method behind a quicksand death is if you become stuck up to your waist and the water levels of the water body rise and drown you. However, again, the chances of that occurring are small. However, if the quicksand is close to a river or coastal area, you can still drown the old-fashioned way if a tide is coming in, but you won’t suffocate due to the sand or mud that composes the quicksand. The furthest, as stated earlier, you will sink is waist-deep, even in the worst-case scenario. The first misnomer about quicksand is that it is always fatal. Strong sudden movements quicken the solidification of quicksand, making it more like a solid than a liquid, so pulling and jerking only makes a bad situation worse.Īlso Read: Can You Walk On Water? Can A Person Be Buried In Quicksand? The trick to escaping the trap is to move slowly and try to float. Going by that, you will only sink halfway, even if you can’t control your panic.ĭisturbing quicksand makes it flow like water, so the real enemy in this instance would be gravity. The average human body density is 1 gram per millimeter, while the average quicksand density is 2 grams per millimeter. Perils of quicksand (Photo Credit : Anneka/Shutterstock)Ĭontinuous movement, like thrashing around in a panic, keeps the mixture more like a liquid, so you will sink further. It sometimes occurs in deserts in down-wind sides of the dunes, but the amount of sinking in such desert quicksand is probably no more than a few centimeters. Quicksand can also occur in deserts, but this is much more rare. In such cases, the loose packing of the sand is maintained by the upward movement of the water. Quicksand can also be found near river banks or at beaches during low tide. An alluvial fan is a cone-shaped body of sand and gravel formed by rivers flowing down from a mountain. Most quicksand can be found next to natural springs, or at the base of alluvial fans. When additional force is applied from the outside, i.e., when someone steps on it, the sand collapses! Where Is Quicksand Found? When the sand collapses into its own void, it is said to become “quick”, hence the name “quicksand”.
The arrangement of the grains can be understood as a house of cards, i.e., the space between the cards is greater than the space the cards take up.
Loose packing of the grains of sand can produce a void that can extend and fill 30-70% of the mass. A grain of sand usually has more of an elongated shape, rather than a spherical one. The structural property of a grain of sand also plays a crucial role in the difference between normal sand and quicksand. Quicksand is a mixture of sand and water, or sand and air, that looks solid.
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