John Pecharich, age 9, of Keewatin, Minnesota., for his question:

How are quicksands formed?

Spring is just around the corner, bringing dreams of wondrous adventures in the great outdoors. Andy's sensible young friends know that the world of nature has a few booby traps, mostly for careless folk. So naturally, they plan ahead to avoid capture. Some of the nastiest booby traps are quicksands and quagmires, bogs and soggy swamps. They are soupy mixtures of water and silty sand or muddy clay. Some disguise themselves to look like smooth lake shores, safe river banks or sandy beaches. Some wear bright green carpets and look like grassy meadows.

These soupy booby traps are made in many different ways. Some bogs and quagmires are partly dried up lakes, choked with surface greenery. Others form when lake and river water gets mixed with the soft mud along their brinks. True quicksands are formed in pockets of sand trapped in deep basins of solid rock. When water or tides also get into these basins, they form soupy mixtures    too thin to stand on and too thick for swimming