• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The Longest-Running Laboratory Experiment In The World Is Streaming Live Right Now

May 10, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

At the University of Queensland, there is a display containing the longest-running laboratory experiment in the world. It has been running so long that two of its custodians have died before they ever saw any results.

Advertisement

The experiment was initiated in 1927 by Thomas Parnell, the University’s first professor of physics. Intended as a demonstration of highly viscous materials, Parnell took pitch – residue from the distillation of coal tars – warmed it, placed it into a sealed glass funnel, and then waited three years for it to settle to the shape of the container. That might seem like a long time to wait for an experiment to experiment to even begin, but given the planned length of the demonstration, it was merely a long blink.

Advertisement

In 1930, Parnell cut the stem of the funnel, allowing the highly viscous liquid to slowly flow out of the bottom. The experiment has been running ever since, incredibly slowly. The first drop fell eight years after the experiment began, with a further five dropping over the next 40 years. The experiment has now been running for nearly 100 years, and has been under the charge of several different custodians. Parnell and his successor Professor John Mainstone both died without seeing the drop fall for themselves, with Professor Andrew White being the current custodian. 

But now the experiment is under the constant watch of a webcam, meaning somebody may witness the next. The last drop (until another occurs) took place in 2014, seen here in heavily sped-up footage.



So, can the experiment tell us anything interesting? 

Advertisement

Despite the experiment being less controlled than is ideal (it is subject to the fluctuations of room temperature, and the internal diameter of the stem cannot be accurately measured without the risk of damaging the experiment) it has a few surprises for us. 

Taking a number of factors into account, it is possible to make a reasonable estimate of how viscous pitch is.

“The viscosity of pitch is then calculated as q = (2.3 +0.5) x 108 Pa s, which is enormous compared to that of common liquids,” a paper on the experiment explains. “Water at 20°C has a viscosity of 1.0 x 10-3 Pa s. It should be noted however that (ignoring superfluidity) it is close to the geometric mean of the range of values that physicists consider – the effective viscosity of the Earth is of the order of 1020 Pa s.”

This doesn’t fit well with previous predictions.

Advertisement

“The result for the viscosity from the pitch drop experiment does not agree well with the predictions based on [previous] measurements, even allowing for the enormous variation of viscosity with temperature and the rather unknown temperature history of the experiment,” the team writes. “The probable explanation lies in the differing viscosities of different samples of pitch – these could have dissimilar proportions of trapped volatile hydrocarbons and this would affect the viscosity.”

If you’d like to watch the experiment live, you can. Currently, there is a pretty big blob forming – but we wouldn’t recommend watching for too long as the next drop is expected to fall sometime in the 2020s, and there’s plenty of the decade left to go.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Angle Labs raises $5 million to build stablecoins based on derivatives
  2. Ancient Roman Curse Tablets Linked To Omens In Book Of Revelation
  3. How Did Ancient Romans Build Aqueducts?
  4. The Placebo Effect: Good Or Bad For Us?

Source Link: The Longest-Running Laboratory Experiment In The World Is Streaming Live Right Now

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • An Ominous Haze Lurks Over The Deadliest Volcano In US, But USGS Says A Repeat Of 1980 Isn’t Coming
  • Hayabusa2’s Target Asteroid Is 4 Times Smaller Than Thought – Can It Still Touch Down On It?
  • In 2011, Slavc The Wolf Journeyed 1,000 Miles To Begin Verona’s First Wolf Pack In 100 Years
  • Anyone Know What These Marine “Y-Larvae” Grow Into? Because Scientists Have No Clue
  • C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) Closest Earth Approach Is Next Month – Will We See It With The Naked Eye?
  • In 2013, A Volcanic Eruption Wiped Out Life On This Remote Island. Then, Somehow, Plants Reemerged
  • 1-Year-Old Orca Takes Out A Big Fat Seal In This Award-Winning – And Extremely Badass – Photo
  • Saturn And Neptune Will Reach Their Brightest In Days – And Look For Saturn’s Temporary Beauty Spot
  • Reindeer Bring A Gift Greater Than Any Of Santa’s – Hope Of A Stable Climate
  • If Deep-Sea Pressure Can Crush A Human Body, How Do Deep-Sea Creatures Not Implode?
  • Meet Ned: The Lonely Lefty Snail Looking For Love
  • “America Will Lead The Next Giant Leap”: NASA Announces New Milestone In Hunt For Exoplanets
  • What Did Neanderthals Sound Like?
  • One Star System Could Soon Dazzle Us Twice With Nova And Supernova Explosions
  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version