Browse Forums General Discussion Re: portable basketball hoop 2Sep 28, 2009 9:25 pm Water will be much easier to drain if you need to move it Re: portable basketball hoop 3Sep 30, 2009 10:16 am A classic question with many answers. Sand is heavier than water, otherwise all the sand in the ocean would be floating on top of the water. BUT, sand is porous which means it will only sink in water when all of the air in the interstices has been replaced with water. Dry sand has lots of space between the grains whereas water is pretty much as dense as it can become, which suggests that for outright mass one would be leaning back towards water. If you want something REALLY heavy, fill the thing with sand then soak the sand with water! The acid test is probably the best one in this instance; get out the kitchen scales and weigh one litre of the sand you want to use vs. one litre of water (which should weigh approx. 1 kg). But as The Duke said, water is easier to remove than sand and far less messy. Further to this point, I don't know if you are familiar with those big moulded plastic crash barriers used on road works, but they are designed to be filled with water. Hit one of those with your car and you will definitely know about it (unless you are driving a Jumbuck in which case you probably won't know about anything ever again). However, these units were designed with ease of use in mind as well as function - set them up, a tanker drives past and fills them with water and when the job is finished just pull the plug and the ballast drains away. Bulk freighters use water as ballast (which is a serious environmental problem) where back in colonial times ships ballast consisted of large stones...sort of the same issue, stone is heavier but water uses the available space better. Even if the sand does weigh more I would be going with water. Cheers, Earl |