Ever wondered how long it would take pitch, a derivative of tar that is used to waterproof boats, to travel from one container to another?

Well me neither but then we’re no Professor Thomas Parnell, who in 1927 began an experiment at the University of Queensland where he was their first professor of physics to demonstrate the fluidity and high viscosity of said pitch.

Apparently at normal room temperature pitch feels quite solid and can even be shattered when hit with a hammer, except that pitch at room temperature is actually a fluid. To prove this Professor Parnell set up an experiment to show this:

In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel – so slowly that now, 80 years later, the ninth drop is only just forming.

The experiment was set up as a demonstration and is not kept under special environmental conditions (it is actually kept in a display cabinet in the foyer of the Department), so the rate of flow of the pitch varies with seasonal changes in temperature. Nonetheless, it is possible to make an estimate of the viscosity of this sample of pitch (R. Edgeworth, B.J. Dalton and T. Parnell, Eur. J. Phys (1984) 198-200). It turns out to be about 100 billion times more viscous than water! The picture above is of Professor John Mainstone, who currently maintains the experiment.

The amazing thing is that in the 80 years that the experiment has been running no-one has actually seen the drop fall and so because of this the University has set up a live webcam of this 80 year old experiment that is still running just in case you are one of the lucky few to actually see the drop fall.

(Note: the viewer requires Flash 9.0 or better installed for your browser of choice. It didn’t work for me in the most current version of Chrome but it did in IE 9, not sure about Firefox)

Let me know if you happen to be watching when the auspicious event occurs .. but of course pics or it didn’t happen.

via TDW / PopSci

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