World's+longest+experiment

= = =The Worlds longest experiment. By Hugo Manning 8DE BACK=

Thomas Parnell Set up the Worlds Longest EXPERIMENT in Australia’s University of Queensland in 1927. the experiment was to see how long pitch would take to drop from a funnel to a jar. This experimet is to find out the viscosity of pitch, a tar like substance.

Parnell died in 1948 just two drops in. John Mainstone, a retired University of Queensland physicist has official custodian of the experiment since Parnell's death.

Only 8 drops have fallen since the experiment started in 1927. The next drop of his charge is expected to fall through the funnel by about 2012, he said, and the jar should remain undisturbed long after that. At its current rate, the last of the pitch won't descend for at least another hundred years.

The experiment continues to be relevant to modern science, too. Mainstone who was Thomas Parnell’s successor talks regularly about viscosity with engineers interested in polymers and liquids, with properties similar to the pitch.

The pitch-drop test won the Ig Nobel Award in 2005, given out for achievements in science that "first make people laugh, and then make them think.

No one has ever seen a drop fall in Thomas Parnell's pitch experiment, even though the experiment is displayed prominently in a bell jar in the lobby of the university's physics department
 * ~ Date ||~ Event ||~ Duration (Months) ||
 * 1927 || Experiment set up ||
 * 1930 || The stem was cut ||
 * December 1938 || 1st drop fell || 96-108 ||
 * February 1947 || 2nd drop fell || 100 ||
 * April 1954 || 3rd drop fell || 108 ||
 * May 1962 || 4th drop fell || 97 ||
 * August 1970 || 5th drop fell || 99 ||
 * April 1979 || 6th drop fell || 104 ||
 * July 1988 || 7th drop fell || 111 ||
 * 28 November 2000 || 8th drop fell || 148 ||

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