The long-awaited vacation is finally here! If, like many French people, you have planned to spend a few days relaxing at the beach this summer, you will inevitably come across a few sandcastles… The youngest love them, but the construction of these sculptures can quickly exasperate. Between the sand, the water, the waves or even the tide, the building often ends up collapsing, if it does not quite simply crash when you remove your seal.
However, it is possible, with a few technical notions, to build a castle whose solidity will make people jealous on the beach…
First of all, choose your location wisely: not too close to the sea, to avoid the tide and destructive waves, but not too far either, to go and get water.
“You just need to find a spot in the strip of sand between the high tide line – easily spotted by a pile of seaweed and marine debris – and the low tide line.”, explains Matthew Robert Bennett, professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at Bournemouth University, 20 Mins.
Because for the sand to hold in place, it is necessary to add, unsurprisingly, a certain amount of water. Neither too much nor too little, and it is often this precarious balance that is difficult to determine.
Fortunately, science is there to help us. Researcher Matthew Robert Bennett thus determined the ideal formula for building a perfect sandcastle: “Water = 0.125 x sand”, in other words, it takes one bucket of water for 8 buckets of dry sand”, reports Positivr.
Choose your sand well: the rougher it is, the more solid your building will be, explains the media.
To start, build a base, flat and thick, on which you can then build towers, turrets and ramparts.
For the final touch, decorate your castle with shells and small pebbles, or even, why not, some seaweed.
