The floor under water is usually pretty light despite having hundreds of pounds of water above it, how is this possible?
In: Physics
Dirt, sand, rocks and organic matter is all porous so it lets water through. So the water that pushes down on the sediments is going straight through it creating pressure under it. This pushes up with an equal force that it is pushed down and therefore it does not get packed. It takes a lot of sediments and rock in order to be relatively watertight so the weight of the water is distributed over a lot of rock under the lake. So eventually it will compress and pack the material but not at the top.
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