People stuck in quicksand4/10/2024 The 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Quicksand made an early appearance in the movies. Relatively few people were killed or injured, but widespread liquefaction damaged or destroyed almost 15,000 homes. That’s exactly what happened in June 1964 when a magnitude 7.6 quake struck Niigata, Japan. The sand or soil can be ejected from the ground and destabilize the surface, so any buildings resting there will start sinking, much like the action of quicksand. When a significant earthquake hits, its motion can make loose, dry soil act like a liquid, a phenomenon called liquefaction. Earthquakes can bring on quicksand-like conditions. The low-lying river estuaries of Florida and the Carolinas are prone to quicksand, while the canyons of southern Utah, New Mexico, and northern Arizona can harbor quicksand when it forms around springs. Common locations for quicksand include beaches, lakeshores, riverbanks, marshes, and the ground surrounding subterranean springs. Quicksand can form anywhere the conditions are right.įor quicksand to form, conditions must be perfect: There needs to be a quantity of grainy soil and a constant water source that saturates the ground. It isn’t clear where and how much dry quicksand actually exists, though likely locations would be in deserts and at the bases of sand dunes, where air can flow among the fine grains. This low-density combination, created in a lab experiment and published in the journal Nature in 2004, instantly swallowed up an object placed on its surface. Dry quicksand occurs when very fine sand particles are suspended in air instead of a liquid. Wet quicksand is the kind in which sand is suspended in water. Anything on the surface of the quicksand will begin to sink. When the colloid is agitated by something-say, a person stepping into it-the mix becomes a liquified soil that can no longer support weight. As long as the colloid stays still, the particles remain where they are. Scientifically speaking, it’s a colloid-a situation in which one substance (sand or silt) is suspended in another substance (water) without settling to the bottom. Most quicksand is a viscous mixture of sand, clay, mud, or silt saturated with water. Michel, France, are prone to quicksand formation.
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