Think about it: How does quicksand even work? Wet sand doesn't have a suction effect, so there would have to be a kind of bottomless pit beneath the sand where you would presumably fall. The Princess Bride gave audiences a variation on quicksand with "lightning sand," which swallows up anyone who steps into its radius with amazing speed. It's almost like animators were warning children that these dangerous sinkholes could be around every corner.
As those stories fell out of fashion, quicksand narratives kept chugging right along thanks to Disney.Ĭartoons like Aladdin, Darkwing Duck, and Ducktales (just to name a few) all have subplots in which someone sinks into quicksand. Quicksand has been around since at least the 1950s, when adventure stories took place in mysterious jungles and deserts. Quicksand is a (relatively) unique occurrence and is something to respect but not necessarily fear in our daily lives like we were led to believe.The threat of quicksand, of slowly sinking into a gritty sludge as it fills your lungs, is inextricably linked with our DNA. If you just stop, take a breath and relax, you'll float back up to where you need to be.and that's kind of beautiful, isn't it? The more you try to fight and resist the path you're on, the more it can feel like you're sinking. Hear me out here, the quicksand symbolizes how the world can make you feel like you are sinking, like it's swallowing you up. Maybe, all those dramatic quicksand scenes we all watched were metaphors. While, yes, quicksand can occur, it's not something you will just be walking along one day and have to fight for your life like we've seen growing up. One person had to be rescued after sinking into soil that had a quicksand-like effect. Just recently, in 2020, MLive reported that Midland, Michigan was warning residents of "quicksand-like lake beds" that were form(ed)ing due to the flooding caused by the Edenville Dam failure and Sanford Dam breach. This means that more water can fit in the spaces between the sand grains. In quicksand the grains are packed more loosely. With dry sand, the sand grains are packed in tight so they can support your weight.
However, when BBC consulted Daniel Bonn from the University of Amsterdam, he shared an experiment he did where he took a sample of quicksand, recreated it and replicated what it would be like for a human to struggle in the fabled foe that is quicksand.īased on Bonn's findings, it's true the more you struggle, stirring up that wet sand, the more you sink but eventually it stops and you can basically float back up. A: Quicksand is a substance in which the particles of one material (such as sand or clay) are suspended in water. The friction between the sand particles is much-reduced, meaning it can’t support your weight anymore and at first you do sink." "But then the water and sand separate, leaving a layer of densely packed wet sand which can trap it. The ground looks solid, but when you step on it the sand begins to liquefy," BBC shared in their reporting on if quicksand can actually kill you. "Quicksand usually consists of sand or clay and salt that’s become waterlogged, often in river deltas. While it definitely seems plausible, is that really how it works? Usually in the movies, characters would be running along their merry way when all of a sudden, they'd stop, look down and realize they were sinking in quicksand.
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