Although horror films frequently depict victims disappearing in quicksand, the truth is much tamer. People cannot fully sink into this type of soil, and laboratory simulations now bear out this little-known fact.
Quicksand is simply ordinary sand that is so saturated with water that the friction between sand particles is reduced, making them unable to support any weight.
The mixture most frequently appears near the deltas of mighty rivers. It can also form after an earthquake releases water from underground reservoirs. When quicksand causes the collapse of bridges and buildings, it truly can be dangerous, experts say.
The probability that a person will be completely sucked into the sand, on the other hand, is nil.
"The Hollywood version is just incorrect," says Thomas Zimmie, an expert in soil mechanics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
Reported online in Nature magazine, September 28, 2005.
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