Talk:Dry quicksand

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GNNNN!!!!

Dry quicksand is a loose sand which yields easily to weight or pressure. Different from regular quicksand, dry quicksand does not cointain any water. Up to recently, it was believed that dry quicksand was a legend, and the reports of humans and complete caravans being lost in dry quicksand were considered fictional.

However, Detlef Lohse of Universiteit Twente in Enschede, Netherlands, experimentally prooved the almost non-existing load bearing capacity of dry quicksand. Lohse disturbed small sand grains with a size of about 10 µm in an air stream and let them sink to the ground. Only about 41% of the volume was occupied by sand, and 59% by air, whereas completely settled sand occupies about 55 to 60% of the volume. This reduced the weight bearing capability to almost nothing. A table tennis ball was placed carefully on the settled sand, but even though this ball is extremely light, it disappeared completely in the sand within less than a second. A small column of sand also jumped up in the air where the ball vanished, similar to a stone fropped in water. The final depth at which the ball came to rest depended on theweight of the ball.

You beat me by 5 minutes in creating this new article. I just wrote the above text but got in an edit conflict with your new article. Do you also read the german Spiegel? However, your article is better, anyway. Damn -- Chris 73 Talk 13:42, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Hi Chris. Thanks for the feedback!

I'd appreciate your thoughts on the duplication between granular material (which was mine) and granular matter (which I didn't know existed). One day I'll get round to combining the pages and redirecting.

best wishes

Robinh 15:55, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just thought that the mention of "Blazing Saddles" should be possibly mentioned within the list of films. The part where the two African American men were ordered to locate the possible quicksand spot where the train tracks were supposedly by. When the men were manually moving the cart down the track, and talking at the same time, they ended up finding it, unfortunately too late. They called for help, and when one of the white cowboys showed up, all he did was save the cart, not the "slaves". The good thing, though, the two guys got out ok, but ended up getting bitched at for "laying down on the job".

[edit] Wow!

I never new about dry quicksand! I think its scarrier than regular quicksand because everything sinks way quicker. Wouldn't want to get caught in that!

Thanks to whomever post the reference of the latest indiana Jones film. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Longlivetheloud2 (talk • contribs) 05:12, 27 May 2008 (UTC)