Everyone has experienced the sadness associated with melting ice cream, but there are actually some fascinating physics at work that determine the time it takes for a block of ice cream to melt and collapse under its own weight. Industry uses the meltdown behaviour of ice cream as a key measure of product quality but prediction of a certain product's stability is not yet possible. This project will study, by microscopy and other imaging techniques, the dynamics of melting for different types of ice cream and compare the mode of collapse and the time it takes for collapse to occur. Improved predictions of stability will benefit commercial production and new product development efforts. (Collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)
Honours and thesis projects are available to study the microstructural dynamics of melting ice cream.