Scene 1

    A close up shot of a young woman up to her neck and struggling in a pit of Hollywood-style quicksand. She screams and struggles for about ten seconds until she goes completely under.

Cut to

Scene 2

    A slightly wider angle view of the same scene, revealing that the quicksand pit is actually a movie set. There is a camera on a tripod in the forground. The woman rises up out of the mud to her shoulders.

    Woman: "Was that okay?"

Cut to

Scene 3

    Scene 1 is repeated without the sound.

    Narrator: "In the movies, quicksand is a deadly trap that sucks its victims down to their doom.

Cut to

Scene 4

    A shot of the same woman, this time in real deep mud, starting with a wide angle shot and then zooming in to a downward-looking close up of her face. She is at her float point and not sinking.

    Narrator: "But in reality, mud and quicksand will not such you down."

    Someone off camera hands the woman a series of lead weights. She takes each and sinks slightly to a new float point. But even with 20 pounds she is still not even shoulder deep.

    Narrator: "Real quicksand actually provides so much buoyancy, Jane is floating very well even while holding twenty pounds of lead weights."

Cut to

Scene 5

    A shot of the surface of a hopper car full of grain.

    Narrator: "Large quantities of grain, however, are damgerous."

Cut to

Scene 6

    A shot of a large barrel of grain, mounted on a platform with a motor attached to create vibration.

    Narrator:"Because it is much less dense than sand, dry grain in a grain elevator, railroad car, or other large container may not support your weight, especially when it is vibrated by machinery. Watch this."

Cut to

Scene 7

    A shot showing a barrel of water. A plastic bottle is floating, though barely, in it.

    Narrator: "This bottle is filled mostly with water but with a little air, so that it just barely floats in water. It floats about as well as a person."

Cut to

Scene 8

    Close up of the barrel of grain. The bottle is placed on it. It floats quite a bit better than on the water.

    Narrator: "As you can see, the grain supports the weight fairly well. Now let's see what happends when the grain is vibrated."

    A motor comes on, the grain vibrates, and the bottle sinks

    Narrator: "As you can see, the bottle sank. If that bottle had been a person, that person would be in real trouble right now. Six people in America died last year in just this way. Be very careful around grain silos and other large volumes of similar material.