The University of Queensland invites you try to play a tiny but historic part in their Ig Nobel Prize-winning (physics, 2005) experiment: The Pitch Drop is the world’s longest running lab experiment. Many believe it’s also the most boring. But in its 86 years, no one has seen a Pitch Drop fall. Now the 9th […]
Tag: drop
If you like to drop things, measuredly
If you like to drop things because you want to measure what happens to them, consider using the drop tower at the University of Bremen, Germany. Pertinent info abounds. Read Geoff Manaugh’s essay in Gizmodo (“This Tower Exists Solely for Dropping Things“). Read the tower authority’s attractive brochure, if you like — read that in German (“Experimente unter Schwerelosigkeit”) […]
The classic shoot-the-monkey demonstration, anew
Daniel Rosenberg (whom you will see in the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony next month) and his colleagues at the Harvard Science Center staged and shot (anew!) this brief video of a classic physics demo: This is a demonstration of the independence of the horizontal and vertical components of the velocity of a projectile. Often referred […]
Viscosity in the news, twice (pitch and molasses)!
‘Midst the ebb and flow and eddies of the news, now and then people pay attention to viscosity. Today serves up two items, each of which is derived from Ig Nobel Prize-winning work. 1.”Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years” says the headline in RTE news (which also has a video report accompanying the text) […]
The slow pitch of excitement
Robin McKie, in The Observer, chronicles the slowly, slowly, slowly mounting excitement about the Ig Nobel Prize-winning [physics prize, 2005] Australian pitch-drop experiment: In terms of output, Queensland University’s pitch drop study – the world’s oldest laboratory experiment – has been stunningly low. Only eight drops have emerged from the lump of pitch installed in the university’s physics building […]
Nature looks, briefly, at the long-running pitch drop experiment
Nature takes a quick look at the now-86-year-long pitch drop experiment, and at several other long-running experiments. The people who started and tend the pitch drop experiment were awarded the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize in physics. Nature says, in part: The pitch-drop experiment started when Thomas Parnell, the university’s first professor of physics, set up […]
Cooking: The drop of the steak, the sizzle of the analysis
XKCD tries to answer the question “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?” This graph is a small part of the analysis: This is an example of both temporarily-haute cuisine and temporarily-fast food. BONUS (barely related): Another example of drop-cooking, compared […]
Dropping and bouncing cats (a collection)
A small collection of items about dropped and bounced cats: 1. “Does a Cat Always Land on Its Feet?” [article in Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 4, no. 4] 2. The Cat Bounce web site. 3. Dead Cat Bounce, the stock market metaphor. 4. The physics of skulking and falling cats. (Thanks to investigator John Runions […]
Sub-fever-pitch for next pitch drop’s imminent dropping
Low key, steady excitement comes through in this News.com report about the Australian project that was honored with the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize in physics: Pitch drop experiment’s ninth drop is preparing to fall. Fingers crossed the live feed holds Eighth drop fell in 2000 Camera failed at crucial moment Ninth drop due within 12 […]