Quicksand

By Trevor Santy

Imagine quicksand the way every movie portrays it, a giant puddle of “goo” that immediately sucks down whatever touches it to an early grave. This movie madness usually has the victim struggling about while slowly sinking to their death. Quicksand however, is something that few people understand or know enough about to escape. In this article, the reader (that’s you), will learn how to escape quicksand, pull someone out of quicksand, and learn some interesting facts about the sinking stuff.

First off, it helps to know what quicksand is before dealing with it. Quicksand is a “weak solid that when disturbed turns into a liquid” (Quicksand doesn’t kill). Essentially what happens is when something steps on it, the quicksand liquefies and then since the thing stepping on it is denser it sinks. Also the more you move the faster it sinks. However, once in the quicksand it isn’t as easy to go out as it was to go in. “pulling up a model ‘foot’ of 10 cm x 10 cm requires a force of some 104 N. This force is comparable to that necessary for lifting up a car!” (Khaldoun).

Now, when stuck in quicksand the first rule is not to panic and thrash about pointlessly, it will just make you sink faster. Second the best way to get out is to float on your back like you were in a pool, since the quicksand is mostly water you will float to the top of it. A different scenario might be how to pull a friend out of quicksand. While the ticket is slow and steady wins the race. The harder and faster you pull, the more force is pulling back (newton’s third law). If you go slowly they will slowly become unstuck but it takes time. Also when things get deeply entrenched in quicksand their eyes bulge. This is because of the pressure that’s sitting on them from the combined wait of water and sediment.

Annotated Bibliography

Khaldoun, A., G. Wedgam, E. Eiser, and D. Bonn. "Quicksand!." Europhysics News 37.4 (2006): 18-19. Print.

This article described all the physics behind quicksand and how it works. It was extremely helpful to answering the questions as well as extremely credible since it was written by 4 different PHD holders all in physics.

Lohse, Detleft, and Raymond Bergmann. "Creating A Dry Variety of Quicksand." Nature 432 (2004): 2. ProQuest. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

This article was written by two doctors and was about how they made a dry variety of quicksand. It was helpful because it described part of the physics behind quicksand and described some of the questions in the book that needed to be answer. It is also very credible from the description of the authors at the bottom.

Discovery. Mybusters "Killer Quicksand" 2009

This video is a Mythbuster's episode on "killer quicksand". In it they test their own quicksand varient and demonstrate that a "killer" quicksand doesnt truly exist. I find this source very credible since they show the process and do multiple tests.

"Quicksand Doesn't Kill." Current Science 16 Dec. 2005: 12. Print.

This article was written anonymously for a science magazine. The article was relatively short and unhelpful but it did accurately describe how to escape from quicksand. However, since the author was anonymous it is impossible to determine its credibility.