Physics World April 2025

Cool stuff: a physicist’s guide to ice cream

Ice cream has a simple ingredient list – just cream and sugar. But as anyone who’s tried to make it knows, this frozen dessert can easily become a sticky, icy mess. In this month’s cover feature, food scientist Douglas Goff explains how lessons from materials science can teach us how to make the perfect scoop. Elsewhere in the issue, Sarah Wild examines the impact of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory – which promises to be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope – while Katherine Skipper explores how quantum-based gravity sensors could be a sensitive and robust way to locate objects buried underground.

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