why does some mud become sticky like peanut butter?

Question

I’ve noticed that plowed fields and dirt roads that trucks take tend to have the stickiest mud. Is it some churning action, in which air is mixed in, that causes this?

In: Physics

Answer 1

Dirt is basically dead plants that have turned into Soil. They have different properties than clay and silt, sand, etc. different forms of mud can possess different characteristics depending on what the mud is made of. Is it primarily sand? Primarily Soil from decaying plant matter? Is it primarily clay? So that’s mostly why some mud might look different.