Sands, Powders, and Grains: An Introduction to the Physics of Granular Materials (Partially Ordered Systems)

Granular materials can be found in an enormous variety of places: from the powders used to make vitamin pills to the rings of Saturn, from beaches to grain elevators, and from pottery clay to interstellar dust. This text covers the basic properties of uniform granular materials, the mixing and segregation of heterogeneous materials (the famous "brazil-nut problem"), and numerical models.