Uploaded May 2014 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Physicists from the FOM Foundation and the University of Amsterdam have discovered that the ancient Egyptians used a clever trick to make it easier to transport heavy pyramid stones by sledge. The Egyptians moistened the sand over which the sledge moved. By using the right quantity of water they could halve the number of workers needed. The researchers published this discovery online on 29 April 2014 in Physical Review Letters.
In this video, you can see the experiment in which a sledge with a 1 kilogram weight is dragged over wet sand. This situation is different from the dry sand experiment, where a pile of sand accumulates in front of the sledge: youtu.be/3vpBQ6Rw0PM
More information can be found in the press release here: http://www.fom.nl/live/english/news/archives/pressreleases2014/artikel.pag?objectnumber=262373
Physicists from the FOM Foundation and the University of Amsterdam have discovered that the ancient Egyptians used a clever trick to make it easier to transport heavy pyramid stones by sledge. The Egyptians moistened the sand over which the sledge moved. By using the right quantity of water they could halve the number of workers needed. The researchers published this discovery online on 29 April 2014 in Physical Review Letters.
In this video, you can see the experiment in which a sledge with a 1 kilogram weight is dragged over wet sand. This situation is different from the dry sand experiment, where a pile of sand accumulates in front of the sledge: youtu.be/3vpBQ6Rw0PM
More information can be found in the press release here: http://www.fom.nl/live/english/news/archives/pressreleases2014/artikel.pag?objectnumber=262373
