Size of Stress Drops

Stress vs. Density

Fluctuation Amplitude

Complex fluids are a class of systems exhibiting unusual mechanical responses to applied stress or strain that are not well understood. Theoretically, these systems have been considered in several different contexts such as glasses and plastics as well as other thermal and athermal systems. Significant agreement has been found in considering these from a variety of theoretical perspectives. However inconsistent and controversial conclusions concerning their material properties still persists. The careful study of these systems has the exciting potential to lead to new physics; and new states of matter. For example, it has been suggested that these systems can jam and a jamming phase diagram can be used to consider how these systems can jam and unjam. Is such a theoretical framework useful? Is there really a new state of matter that is jammed? This large body of theoretical work has thus far been poorly supported with experiments. This thesis uses data visualization of large data sets from experimental work to connect well founded theories in statistical mechanics to this new class of systems.