Ever watched paint dry? Sorry, you’re nothing but an amateur.
Last week one of the longest-running experiments in the history of the world ended when a drop fell. Originally set up in 1944, during the second World War, the experiment was set up at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland to test how long it would take for a drop of pitch to fall.
Turns out, it took 69 years to capture a drop in the process of falling — so long ago that no one remembers who actually set the experiment up in the first place.
“No one has ever seen a drop fall anywhere in the world,” Trinity’s Shane Bergin told New Scientist. “It’s one of the oldest experiments – an oddity, a curiosity.”
The experiment was designed to show that seemingly-solid room-temperature pitch, which shatters if hit with a hammer, is actually a very viscous liquid and will flow given enough time. There are multiple similar experiments around the world, but no-one has ever managed to capture the moment before. Apparently a drop falls every decade or so, but has always gone un-noticed before Bergin set up a webcam to record and broadcast the droplet falling.
Trinity College scientists tracking the drop calculated the viscosity of the pitch as 2×107 Pa s, which is approximately two million times the viscosity of honey.
While old, this is by no means the oldest continuously-running scientific experiment in the world. A similar experiment at the University of Queensland has been running since 1927, and ranks the as longest-running experiment ever. According to Trinity College, eight drops have fallen in this experiment, but none have ever been witnessed.
Which makes one ask:
If a drop falls in a test tube and nobody sees it, does it really fall?
Filed under: OffBeat, Science
John Koetsier 19 Jul, 2013
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Source: http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/19/69-year-scientific-experiment-ends-with-someone-no-ones-ever-seen-before/
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