Emulsions and foams are commonly found in products made by industries ranging from those
associated with food and pharmaceuticals to those involved in selling personal care products.
This work is motivated by the need for accurate models of their mechanics, which can then be
used for efficient processing.

They can be thought of as soft repulsive spheres that can overlap with one another to a
certain extent, along with a weakly attractive potential between the spheres. We study such
systems in the context of the jamming transition - a transition seen in disordered systems
from a flowing state to one where they jam and develop rigidity. The canonical model for
the jamming transition is one of soft, repulsive and frictionless spheres which describe many
common physical systems. An attractive tail is added to the repulsive potential used in this
canonical model, in order to describe systems like emulsions and foams.

We compare the linear response of emulsions and foams with that of the canonical model.
Recent studies have shown for the canonical model that when we impose a quasi-static shear
strain at the boundaries of disordered systems, the linear elastic regime survives for a small
window close to the beginning of the straining action. It gives way to softening in the linear
elastic regime, associated with the beginning of a nonlinear response regime. We investigate
how this window leading to the non linear response changes for emulsions and foams. The
predictions obtained for softening, from ideas that derive from linear response in the jamming
transition and by imposing a quasi-static shear strain is compared for both emulsions and the
canonical model.