Inspired, eventually, by the long, slow, continuing Australian pitch-drop experiment, a team in London has speeded things up considerably but — deliberately — not at all completely. They published a study about it: “Measurement of bitumen viscosity in a room-temperature drop experiment: student education, public outreach and modern science in one,” A.T. Widdicombe, P. Ravindrarajah, […]
Tag: drop
The drop dropped in the Ig Nobel-winning pitch drop experiment
Big little news from Queensland, as reported by Celeste Biever and Lisa Grossman for New Scientist magazine: Longest experiment sees pitch drop after 84-year wait The pitch has dropped – again. This time, the glimpse of a falling blob of tar, also called pitch, represents the first result for the world’s longest-running experiment…. Up-and-running since 1930, the experiment […]
A pitch for the pitch drop experiment
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 […]
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”) […]