Watch the Pitch Drop™
 

This is the longest known, uninterrupted experiment in the world.

In 1927, an Australian professor put an extremely viscous liquid (asphalt, a.k.a. The Pitch, which is commonly mistaken for a solid) into a funnel and it has been slowly dripping ever since.

It has dripped a drop only 8 times since 1938, and has never been seen by a human before. Now there is a web cam, and you can watch it slowly drip.

Very exciting.

Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment

Webcam:
http://www.theninthwatch.com/feed/

RadioLab Podcast about the Pitch Drop
http://www.radiolab.org/story/267176-never-quite-now/

Exciting

http://i.imgur.com/OVsV6GZ.png

Damn Buck...you need to join a pron site or something.

I bet the 1954 drop was incredibly exciting, since it was so far ahead of schedule.

Oh, I didn't mention that it's due to drop any moment now.

My favorite part about this is that there is already some pitch in the beaker below and it hasn't dropped since the year 2000. Pretty cool how that has just been sitting there, uninterrupted since then.

Glass is a liquid as well.

They must have been in a serious heat wave in the years preceding.

Any paint drying sites out there?

I think the webcam is broken I'm just getting a still image.

Bob Dole is printing the poster!

LMAO

Im gonna set a webcam up so people can watch my grass grow.

I'll wait for the gif.

I've had moments on the toilet like that

lol

The site automatically logs you out after a few minutes of inactivity because if you sign up, and you're logged in and actively watching (a prompt will come up giving you 30 seconds to confirm you're still watching), then your name will go in the official record under observer of the 9th drop.

Right now only 363 people are watching this. It also keeps track of your time. I've been watching for 17 minutes and I'm the #1119th top watcher.

I have to go to the doctors office in 20 minutes and I'm scared I'm gonna miss it.

This shit has me on the edge of my seat!

This is about as exciting as watching old people ****....

Well, the world itself was the longest running experiment, well, until the Vogan's blew it up.

Sorry, inner geek leaking out...

What exactly are they trying to prove here, the existence of gravity?

I think when the experiment started, it wasn't common knowledge that something seeming so solid could be a liquid. Still probably isn't, but I'm guessing it is more accepted now than then.

Set up a web cam in your bedroom and lets find out.

Anything going on in here?

Nope? Okay, bye.

myth

Buck, I could be wrong, but looking at this thing makes me think it's still a few weeks from falling. It looks like it's still super thick at the bottom where the drop should separate from the rest of the asphalt.

I don't know how thick it needs to be at it's neck to break, but supposedly it's going to happen soon. Soon could mean another year though.

Last time it took 12.83 years for it to drop. That was in the year 2000. So add another 12.83 years and it's about due.

It is actually slowing down.

"Some time after the seventh drop fell in 1988, air conditioning was added to the location where the experiment takes place. The temperature stability has lengthened each drop's stretch before it separates from the rest of the pitch in the funnel."

You're right, I was purely speculating. I don't know how to read the thickness or when it's going to break either. I've been working at the computer this morning and have kept it open. I'm the #346th top watcher now. I'm about to lose steam though, because I'm outta here.

That makes sense.

Here's a timelapse from May 2012 to August 2013.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/LZdgcyUQGbs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I'm conducting a two poops per day experiment. Got a webcam in my toilet. Anybody want the link? You don't have to wait that long.

Oh holy hell. Even the timelapse looks like a complete stand still. I'm calling it now, this thing doesn't drop for at least another six months. You gonna stay updated on this thing?

Wife use the same bathroom? If so, sign me up.

It looks like the remnants of what I assume is the last drop might be slightly impeding the progress of the current one. Giving it just a little bit of support could add years.

No thanks, I'm good.

It's a process...

Yeah I'm wondering how many previous drops are in that and if it's actually impeding the progress or if the last drop is completely along the side of the glass it's in and isn't actually touching the current one.

LMAO

I'm taking wagers on this. I wonder what the Vegas line is?

while I am completely disinterested in the link.....

would you please clarify the parameters of your experiment?
what are your expectations?
do you expect to have to force yourself to get that second one in?
OR....are you expecting to be sitting there prairie dogging, waiting for the clock to strike midnight so you can launch some taco bell and not exceed your set "two a day" limitation?

Post results in the date thread when you talk to your next potential girlfriend about this.

Is the gif out yet?

The only reason this should have bumped is if it is over. Is it over?

looks the same as it did a week ago

It has to be bumped in order to find out if it's over and time to bump it.

Is this drop part of the "right53"?

I gotta drop a pitch here pretty soon. Thanks for reminding me.

I don't know who this poor bastard is, but this pic never gets old

No it's not it's an amorphous solid.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/L8Ql9M5Njnc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

lol this is cool.

This is more like what I expected

Mercy!

http://lohisport.files.wordpress.com...headlights.jpg

Still rendering......

See post #15.

Update, the pitch has visually moved quite a bit since this thread started.

http://i.imgur.com/pjmMPvJ.png

i might be crazy, but i swear it is moving side to side...it might be happening guys

hey!

i happen to think old people ****ing is very exciting, sonny! :skip:

You're not crazy. It's swaying. I see it as well.

that's because you're staggering from drinking too much last night, perhaps?
:p

I wasn't on this before, crazy that over 200,000 hours have been wasted watching this. I'll keep it up in a side browser while I browse tonight, more than likely it's still weeks away though.

I've got 99 problems and a pitch ain't one.

I don't have time to waste watching this nonsense. I'm to busy on "Nessie" cam, a 24 hr feed into Loch Ness. That shit is real, man.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UZKZF7FNh_0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This is exactly like waiting for the 2014 draft.

When I saw the thread bumped by listo, I thought may e it dropped and Buck had missed it. He might have cried.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...l#.U1HKs1fePua


Home |Physics & Math | News |Back to article
Longest experiment sees pitch drop after 84-year wait

• 18:30 17 April 2014 by Celeste Biever and Lisa Grossman

The pitch has dropped - again. This time, the glimpse of a falling blob of tar, also called pitch, represents the first result for the world's longest-running experiment.

Sadly however, the glimpse comes too late for a former custodian, who watched over the experiment for more than half a century and died a year ago.

Up-and-running since 1930, the experiment is based at the University of Queensland in Australia and seeks to capture blobs of pitch as they drip down, agonisingly slowly, from their parent bulk.

It was pipped to the post last year when a similar experiment, set up in 1944 at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, captured the first ever video footage of a blob of pitch droppinghttp://www.newscientist.com/img/icon/artx_video.gif.

In that instance, the blob separated from its parent bulk. By contrast, the Australian team filmed the collision between the ninth blob ever to fall and the eighth blob, which was sitting at the bottom of their beaker – but the ninth blob is still attached to the pitch above it.

Still, the Australian result is important because the experiment has a better set-up, says Stefan Hutzler, a member of the Trinity College Dublin team who used those results to calculate the pitch's viscosity. "Theirs is in a glass container; they measure the temperature, measure the humidity as well," he says. "Ours, we don't really call it an experiment. It was really just sitting there on a shelf, going back to the 1940s."

Near miss

The fact that both experiments dropped within a year of each other is "just pure luck", says Hutzler. Hot summer weather in Ireland last year may have influenced the timing.

The Queensland experiment already features in the Guinness World Records and won an IgNobel prize in 2005. It was set up by physicist Thomas Parnell to illustrate that although pitch appears solid, shattering when hit with a hammer at room temperature, it is actually a very viscous liquid.
The eventual result follows several near misses, according to the University of Queensland. John Mainstone, who oversaw the experiment for more than 50 years until his death last August, missed observing the drops fall three times – by a day in 1977, by just five minutes in 1988 and, perhaps most annoying, in 2000, when the webcam that was recording it was hit by a 20-minute power outage.

"It's a pity of course that the person in charge died about a year ago, so he never saw the drop," Hutzler says. "He would have enjoyed that."

Honey flow

The eighth and ninth drops each took about 13 years to fall, says current custodian Andrew White. By contrast, the seven drops that fell between 1930 and 1988 did so faster – at an average rate of one drop every eight years.

The next step is to see how long it takes the ninth drop to separate from the pitch above it: "It may tip over quickly or it might slow right down and take years to break away," says White.

You can keep an eye on the ninth drop's movements via a live web stream. The University of Queensland says it will work out who was watching when the pitch dropped and record their names for posterity.

The drop experiments show that the physics of a drop forming in a viscous material is still not well understood, Hutzler says – although he doesn't think watching pitch for decades is necessarily the best way to study it. Using honey or some other less viscous fluid would give you better statistics.

"I think these experiments capture the imagination just because they go on for such a long time," he says. The video of the drop in Dublin quickly went viral on YouTube. "Ironically, you have a very slow event happening, but the news spreads very quickly."

Mother****er!:cuss:

I invested a lot of time on that ****ing thing last time this thread was bumped and now I have to wait another 15 years or whatever?

Yup.

High fives, everyone.

We did it! Congrats everybody.

Wait a sec--hold everything. The thing is still connected by a thick band. They are calling it a "drop" because it got low enough that it touched the prior drop, which is sticking way up from the bottom of the receptacle.

I say no drop until it separates. And, they ought to clean out the prior drop remnants to keep it from impeding the coming drop. This whole thing is bullshit now.

Rigged

****

I don't think this counts. Look at the live feed.

If you took a dump and it looked like that, would you consider it to have "dropped?"

LMAO

Yeah, but it's no longer supported from the top. It's supported by the bottom as well. Is the definition of a "drop" that it gets no support from the top, or is it that it gets support from the bottom? This is quite perplexing.

I think it drops as soon as it gets support from the bottom. This is a test of viscosity or whatever. As soon as it gets support from something other than the top, you can no longer test viscosity.

At first glance, I agree that they should clear out the bottom. But then I started wondering how far it would stretch before it broke and literally fell. I'm not sure that six inches is enough. They may have to start this whole thing over and set the hole up above a fifty-foot drop to eliminate ambiguity.

So, you basically agree that the experiment is ruined.