Michael Vick., age 11, of Newport News, Va., for his question:
How does quick sand get its sucking power?
Bogs and swamps marshes and quicksands are booby traps for explorers venturing into new territory. E.~a y year, a number of lives are lost in these tricky traps, and som,e, though not all, of these victims could have been saved. Most of the unlucky victims refused to be warned or failed to use good. Sense when they fell into a quicksand or one of its boggy relatives.
A quicksand is a treacherous patch of ground, on a beach, a lake or a riverbank. The surface may look exactly like the safe and solid ground around it, and in tidal areas a quicksand may be dangerous only at certain times of the day. A muddy bog may also disguise itself to look like solid ground. On the other hand, like a marsh or swamp, its surface may be overgrown with mosses, grasses or other healthy looking vegetation.
A sensible explorer proceeds slowly into suspicious new territory and cautiously carries a stick to prod the ground ahead. Safety rule number one is to be alert. Learn to recognize and avoid these booby traps, and you will never fall into one.
A quicksand is a soupy mixture of sand and water too thick to swim in and too thin to stand upon. It is a trap in more senses than one. For the rocky formation below the surface acts as a solid basin to trap the soupy mixture of sand and water. Scanewhere below ground is a hollow or pocket in a layer of dense rock. It is partly filled with sandyyd water from the sea, the river or lake slops into the basin and cannot escape.
A bog or swamp is a similar soupy mixture of silty mud and water trapped in a basin. It may be the dregs from a drying lake covered with thriving green plant life. But there are solid sides to the basin, and perhaps, 30 feet down, there is a solid floor.
When you step into any of these traps, your feet begin to sink because the soupy mixture is unable to support your weight. It may seem that a quicksand sucks you dawn, but in most cases you merely sink, and the more you struggle the faster you sink. Howeyer, some quicksands fill up with the high tide, and the low tide drags out the sunken water on its return to the sea. The returning tidal water really does suck you down more.
If you are unlucky enough to fall into a boggy mess of envy type, remember rule two. Keep your head and do not struggle. Keep your arms outstretched and wait calmly until you sink up to your chest. When your body weight equals the weight of the soupy mixture it is displacing, the sinking will stop.
As you sink you may feel sucked dawn which leads to panic, which leads to futile struggling, which may be fatal. Keep a calm head and refuse to move until your weight adjusts and the sinking stops. It is now best to wait for help. A skilled expert could show you how to save yourself, but this trick is too risky when one wrong move may cost your life.