Posted on 07/22/2013 7:01:13 AM PDT by Red Badger
The Pitch Drop experiment set up in 1944 at Trinity College Dublin's School of Physics is one of the world's oldest continuously running experiments.
The experiment was established to demonstrate that pitch is a material that flows, albeit with an incredibly high viscosity hence extremely slowly. Also known as asphalt or bitumen, pitch appears to be solid at room temperature.
Whilst pitch has been dropping from the funnel in Trinity since 1944, nobody had ever witnessed a drop fall. It happens roughly only once in a decade.
In May of this year, with the latest drop about to fall, Professor Shane Bergin broadcast the experiment via the web. On July 11th, the drop dripped. You can see a time lapse video of this here.
Tracking the evolution of the drop, Professor Denis Weaire and Professor Stefan Hutzler, and David Whyte calculated the viscosity of the pitch to be 2x107 Pa s, approximately 2 million times the viscosity of honey.
Commenting on the significance of the demonstration, Professor Shane Bergin stated: "People love this experiment because it gets to the heart of what good science is all about curiosity. Over these past few months, there has been constant chat about when the drip would drop. I watched the time lapse video of the pitch drop falling over and over again. I was amazed. This was the first time this phenomenon was ever witnessed!"
The School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin has many old demonstrations and ancient experimental kit. The Pitch Drop experiment was begun when Nobel Prize winner Earnest Walton was head of the department.
The University of Queensland have a similar experiment that was begun in 1927. The Guinness Book of World Records ranks this as the world's longest running experiment. Whilst 8 drops have fallen in this experiment, nobody has ever witnessed one fall.
Whilst it will be roughly another 10 years before the next drop falls, you can look at the live experiment here.
Slow pitch softball . . . strike ten.
Because that notation is intended to express "two times ten to the seventh power," or 20,000,000.
It does. Buildings several hundred years old with the original glass have windows that are thicker at the bottom than the top.
Some panes are. Some are thicker on the sides and some are thicker on the top.
It is do to the construction methods of the glass hundreds of years ago, not glass flowing.
...and it seems the same asphalt is repaired year after year. Seems like endless makework programs. Government at work.
If a pitch drops in the lab and there is nobody there to see it, did it really drop?..............
You could get a government grant to ‘study’ it!............for like 1000 years!............
Got to start all over again..............
TWO colleges did this..........
In today’s dollars or 1944 dollars?............
Hmmm... should I watch Pitch Drop or Baby Drop?......decisions, decisions........
Yes, it’s a mis-print. That should be 2x10^7 Pa.............or IOW, a whole bunch of Pa’s........
Actually it appears more exciting than some baseball games I’ve watched over the years.
lol! Well, they do need confirmation, however, scientifically, they need two more such that three colleges verify the first.
Well, in a baseball game a ‘dropped pitch’ would be exciting......bases loaded, two outs in the bottom of the ninth, three balls and two strikes...............
I used to work in calibration labs for a military contractors and one of the things I had to check was the accuracy of the ‘viscosity cups’ that are used to verify the viscosity of paints used on aircraft. Very boring, but essential...........
Now that’s funny.
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