Foods make up some of the most complex examples of soft condensed matter (SCM) with which we interact daily. Their complexity arises from several factors: the intricacy of components, the different aggregation states in which foods are encountered, and the multitude of relevant characteristic time and length scales. Because foodstuffs are governed by the rules of SCM physics but with all the complications related to real systems, the experimental and theoretical approaches of SCM physics have deepened our comprehension of their nature and behaviour, but many questions remain. In this review we discuss the current understanding of food science, by considering established SCM methods as well as emerging techniques and theoretical approaches. With their complexity, heterogeneity and multitude of states, foods provide SCM physics with a challenge of remarkable importance.
The dynamics of expanding domes of isothermal lava are studied by treating the lava as a viscoplastic material with the Herschel-Bulkley constitutive law. Thin-layer theory is developed for radially symmetric extrusions onto horizontal plates. This provides an evolution equation for the thickness of the fluid that can be used to model expanding isothermal lava domes. Numerical and analytical solutions are derived that explore the effects of yield stress, shear thinning and basal sliding on the dome evolution. The results are briefly compared with an experimental study. It is found that it is difficult to unravel the combined effects of shear thinning and yield stress; this may prove important to studies that attempt to infer yield stress from morphology of flowing lava.
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