Friday, December 3, 2010

Move over Heinz Ketchup.

The world famous Pitch Drop Experiment was started in 1927 to demonstrate to students that some substances that appear to be solid are in fact very-high-viscosity fluids. Thomas Parnell poured a heated sample of pitch into a sealed funnel and allowed it to settle for three years. In 1930, the seal at the neck of the funnel was cut, allowing the pitch to start flowing. Large droplets form and fall over the period of about a decade. The eighth drop fell on 28 November 2000, allowing experimenters to calculate that the pitch has a viscosity approximately 230 billion times that of water. This is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's longest continuously running laboratory experiment, and it is expected that there is enough pitch in the funnel to allow it to continue for at least another hundred years.

All together now: "Anticipation Is Making Me Wait..."
Just takes ya back don't it?

I am starting my own experiment. See below.

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