'You have to introduce water into the sand,' Bonn said. Bonn also suggests moving your legs around at this point, to stir in water, which will help you float. Stretch out on your back to increase your surface area and wait until your legs pop free. The advice : Stay calm and eventually you'll float. The density of an average human body is about 62 pounds per cubic foot, which is less than quicksand's 125 pounds per cubic foot.

When they did this, the ball sank right to the bottom.īut when they used an aluminum ball with a density equal to the human body, which is less than the density of quicksand, they found it impossible to sink the ball, no matter how hard they shook the pit. The ball didn't sink until the researchers began to shake the pit, simulating movement and turning the mixture of sand and water more liquid. The researchers simulated a quicksand pit in the lab and placed an aluminum ball of greater density than the quicksand on top of the pit.

It's the difficulty of getting water into this very densely packed sand that makes it difficult for you to pull your foot out.'īonn and his colleagues found, however, that if a you remain calm, you can actually float your way to safety. 'We then have densely packed sand at the bottom, and water floating on top of it. 'If you move into the quicksand, this loose packing will collapse,' Bonn told LiveScience. Once the victim's foot becomes stuck in it, the situation is dire. The wet sand sediment becomes so densely packed that it's harder to move than cold molasses. 29 issue of the journal Nature.Īfter the mix liquefies, the quicksand splits into a water-rich phase and a sand-rich one. 'The higher the stress, the more liquid the quicksand becomes, so movement by a trapped body causes it to sink in deeply,' study leader Daniel Bonn of the University of Amsterdam writes in the Sept.

Guy gets stuck in quicksand fake