Got time on your hands? Watch the web’s slowest experiment – live!

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Posted by Tim Guest

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July 12th 2012 at 9:40

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The Pitch Drop Experiment

If you have the patience of a saint, then you can take part in the pitch drop experiment – the world’s longest continuously running laboratory experiment.

Pitch – a substance used to waterproof boats – can feel solid, almost brittle at room temperature, and can be shattered with a blow from a hammer. However, pitch is actually a liquid – about 100 billion times more viscous than water.

In 1927, Professor Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia set up his now world famous experiment to demonstrate the viscosity of pitch.

He heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years later, the sealed stem was cut. From that day, the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel. And by slowly, I mean really slowly – 80 years after the experiment started, the ninth drop is only just starting to form.

You can watch the experiment live on the University of Queensland’s website. To the untrained eye, it may look like a static image of a bell jar, but it is actually live footage of the experiment.

The experiment has become something of an internet sensation, with many people anxiously awaiting the ninth drop’s fall from the funnel – but in the 80 years the experiment has been running, no one has yet seen the pitch drop fall.

The next drop is expected to fall at any time within the next year – could you be the lucky person to see it?

Picture shows the Pitch Drop Experiment from University of Queensland featuring the current (2007) custodian, John Mainstone (picture taken in 1990), two years into the life of the 8th drop © The University of Queensland

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