Soil of these properties determine the aeration of the soil and the ability of water to infiltrate and to be held within the soil. The mineral components of soil are sand, silt and clay, and their relative proportions determine a soil's texture. Properties that are influenced by soil texture include porosity, permeability, infiltration, shrink-swell rate, water-holding capacity, and susceptibility to erosion. In the illustrated USDA textural classification triangle, the only soil in which neither sand, silt nor clay predominates is called loam. While even pure sand, silt or clay may be considered a soil, from the perspective of conventional agriculture a
Granular material physics of granular matter and whose book "The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes" remains an important reference to this day. According to material scientist Patrick Richard, "Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and are the second-most manipulated material in industry (the first one is water)". In some sense, granular materials do not constitute a single phase of matter but have characteristics reminiscent of solids, liquids, or gases depending on the average energy per grain. However, in each of these states granular materials also exhibit properties which are unique. Granular materials also exhibit a wide range of pattern forming