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• Pitch Drop experiment

We're home to the famous Pitch Drop experiment, which holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running laboratory experiment .

The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar that is the world's thickest known fluid and was once used for waterproofing boats.

Thomas Parnell, UQ's first Professor of Physics, created the experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties.

At room temperature pitch feels solid - even brittle - and can easily be shattered with a hammer. But, in fact, at room temperature the substance - which is 100 billion times more viscous than water - is actually fluid.

The experiment explained

In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. He allowed the pitch to cool and settle for three years, and then in 1930 he cut the funnel's stem.

Since then, the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel - so slowly that it took eight years for the first drop to fall, and more than 40 years for another five to follow.

Now, 87 years after the funnel was cut, only nine drops have fallen - the last drop fell in April 2014 and we expect the next one to fall sometime in the 2020s.

The experiment was set up as a demonstration and is not kept under special environmental conditions - it's kept in a display cabinet - so the rate of flow of the pitch varies with seasonal changes in temperature.

The late Professor John Mainstone became the experiment's second custodian in 1961. He looked after the experiment for 52 years but, like his predecessor Professor Parnell, he passed away before seeing a drop fall.

In the 86 years that the pitch has been dripping, various glitches have prevented anyone from seeing a drop fall.

See for yourself

To see the experiment for yourself, view the physical set-up in its display case in the foyer of the Parnell Building (Building 7).

Alternatively, you can watch the experiment's live video stream . More than 35,000 people from some 160 countries are registered to view the stream.

Professor Andrew White is the Pitch Drop's third and current custodian.

Email your Pitch Drop enquiry to  [email protected] .

Related links

UQ News explainer: the Pitch Drop experiment

Pitch Drop experiment paper (PDF, 252kB)

UQ Physics Museum

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• B2 listening

A lecture about an experiment

Listen to the lecture about a science experiment to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

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In today's lecture we're going to be talking about experiments, and I thought it might be interesting for you all to learn about the world's oldest continuously running laboratory experiment that is still going today. In fact, it holds the Guinness World Record for being the longest-running experiment. This experiment began in 1927 and has been going ever since.

It's called the 'pitch drop' experiment and it was created by Professor Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland, Australia. Parnell was the university's first physics professor, and he wanted to show in this experiment that everyday materials, such as pitch, can have quite surprising properties.

You see, when pitch is at room temperature, it feels solid. You can easily break it with a hammer. However, it isn't in fact solid. At room temperature, pitch is many billions of times more viscous than water, but it's actually fluid.

In 1927, Professor Parnell took a sample of pitch. He heated it and poured it into a glass funnel. He allowed the pitch to cool and settle – for three years. He then turned the funnel upside down and cut the top off it.

Since then, the pitch has slowly dropped out of the funnel. How slowly? Well, the first drop took eight years to fall. It took another forty years for another five drops to fall. Today it's been almost 90 years since the experiment started. Only nine drops have fallen from the funnel. The last drop fell in April 2014 and the next one is expected to fall in the 2020s.

The experiment has a tragic story associated with it. Professor Parnell died without seeing a pitch drop. His replacement, Professor John Mainstone, became responsible for the pitch drop experiment from 1961. He held the job for 52 years, and missed seeing the drop fall three times – by a day in 1977, by just five minutes in 1988 and finally in 2000, when the webcam that was recording the experiment suffered a power outage for 20 minutes, during which time the pitch dropped.

The pitch drop experiment is something we can all participate in now. There's a live web stream that allows anyone to watch the glass funnel and wait for the fateful moment. A similar experiment to the Queensland pitch drop was set up in Dublin, and the video of the moment the pitch actually dropped went viral on the internet. It's interesting to see how a very slow event can spread news so quickly.

Do you know of any other famous experiments? What are they?

Language level

I pitifully do not know about any other famous experiment. I do know about regular experiments that I learned in the school or the most famous that you always hear, but no different from them.

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At university, I learnt about several interesting experiments made in physics, but the "pitch drop" is really very curious to know. The first experiment I did was when I was at the primary school. It was a botanic experiment. I put some beans on the bottom of a glass for bear, I make them wet and then I covered them with some cotton. After some days, I saw the roots coming out of the beans: a new plant was growing! That made me very happy.

My favourite is Isaac newton's law of motion and forces experiments that made him one of the greats of science

Yes, I can certainly tell you about some famous experiments from various fields of science and psychology. Here are a few notable ones: -Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) -Little Albert Experiment (1920) -Double-Slit Experiment (1801) -Pavlov's Dogs (1890s) -Hawthorne Studies (1920s-1930s) -Skinner's Box (Operant Conditioning Chamber) -Asch Conformity Experiments (1950s) These experiments have had a lasting impact on their respective fields and have often raised ethical and philosophical questions about human behavior, perception, and ethics in research.

Honestly, I don't remember any famous experiment like the pitch experiment. However, I find it intriguing and haven't heard of it before. After completing my current task, I plan to look for the live stream out of curiosity.

I remember an experiment carried out by Galileo during the Renaissance. He dropped two balls of the same size but different weights on an inclined floor and saw that they both ran at the same speed past each other. He then concluded that in free fall, the acceleration due to gravity is not affected by the weight of objects.

actually i can't remember a big experiment like the pitch drop. However a hollandies guy i follow on the youtube he made most push ups in 1 minute with helicopter and he got reward from gennies record.That's the only experiment i think its worth to write.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any experiments as famous as the pitch drop experiment. However, I do remember learning about the famous story of Isaac Newton observing an apple fall from a tree, which led him to discover the concept of gravity. This is a great example of how simple observations can lead to groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

I really like to read a article or watch a video about experiments. Also, i interested in chemical when i got to high school.Now, ı have been working as a R&D engineer and we have been doing a lot of experiments to improve our products to have better one. For example , when ı worked at FORD Otosan, ı was responsible of the development tests of the Gen 2 and electricity engines for the trucks. We have tried to find a better solutions to reduce C02 emission to have a better world in the future without climate change. We can fix our world together

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Advertisement

Pitch drop caught on camera after 69-year wait

By Hal Hodson

18 July 2013

Video: First video of slowest-moving drop

Inaction movie

It took 69 years, but at last we’ve seen the pitch drop. One of the world’s longest-running experiments climaxed last week, when a finger-sized bulb of pitch (bitumen) separated from its parent bulk and dropped into a beaker. For the first time ever, this fleeting event has been recorded on video.

The pitch drop experiment was set up at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in 1944. The original version of the experiment , at the University of Queensland in Australia, has been running since 1930, but various glitches have prevented that team from actually seeing a drop separate.

“No one has ever seen a drop fall anywhere in the world,” says Trinity’s Shane Bergin , whose webcam recorded the event on 11 July. “It’s one of the oldest experiments – an oddity, a curiosity.”

Pitch shatters if hit with a hammer at room temperature. Physicist Thomas Parnell set up the Queensland experiment to illustrate that, although it appears solid, pitch is actually an incredibly viscous liquid. (Recent experiments showed that the same is true for “Gorilla Glass” , used in smartphones and tablet screens.)

In 1927 Parnell heated a blob of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. After letting the material settle for three years, Parnell cut the stem to allow the pitch to drip out and fall. Gravity has since drawn out a gloopy drop about once a decade, and a ninth is expected to fall sometime this year. The long-running experiment has since been added to the Guinness Book of World Records and won an IgNobel prize in 2005 .

Perfect pitch

Parnell died having never seen a drop separate, and John Mainstone , the current custodian of the Queensland experiment, has had no luck capturing such an event on camera.

No one recalls who set up the Trinity experiment, which sat on a shelf largely unwatched for years. Bergin recently rekindled excitement in the project and set up a webcam last year so that anyone around the world could join the vigil. The video shows that the drop actually fell in two stages, says Bergin. “There was one heavy fall, and then there was a tiny thread left that was still connected. That broke while I was there.”

His colleagues Denis Weaire and Stefan Hutzler immediately started analysing the drop footage, measuring its development over time to figure out that their pitch is two million times more viscous than honey, and two billion times more viscous than water. Weaire has suggested that Trinity hold an annual party on 11 July to commemorate the pitch drop, and to check in on the next drip.

“We have great plans for the next drop and a decade to put them into action,” says Bergin. “Within ten years, God knows what kind of technology will be available. We’ll be keeping up with that to capture the next one in all its stunning beauty.”

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