Pitch Drop Experiment | Hacker News Reader

Pitch Drop Experiment

smp.uq.edu.au

88 pointsacqbu17 comments

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More long-term experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_experiment

My favorite is the LTEE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...

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

You'd think there would be a backup camera or two by now

Other universities have caught it on camera.

https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/trinity-scientists-c...

I just took a look at the feed (http://thetenthwatch.com/feed) and was amused that the time reference was a little Casio clock running a few minutes fast.

Pitch Drop Experiment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22255308 - Feb 2020 (30 comments)

Pitch Drop Experiment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529597 - March 2019 (12 comments)

Pretty sure there have been other threads too, if anyone can find them.

I predict it'll be another 8-10 years before somebody posts this again.

It always struck me as slightly sad, and maybe even slightly poetic, that the guy starting the experiment died only months before the eight drop fell in 2014.

"In 1988, with the experiment proudly displayed at Brisbane's World Expo, Prof Mainstone was fetching a drink when the seventh drop fell. By 2000, a video camera had been set up to capture drop number eight, but it malfunctioned at the crucial moment." Taken from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28402709 I imagine he took this with the sort of humour that such a custodian would adopt for such an experiment!

My wife is an astrophysics lecturer at UQ. Whenever I take the kids around to visit her in her office, we often stop by to look at the pitch drop.

I can't quite explain the experience of standing there for a few minutes willing the damn thing to drop. It's a quaint feeling of expectation, wilful wanting and wistful disappointment as you draw yourself away from the experiment... usually by a child pulling you by the hand to do more interesting things.

While I'm standing here... is it going to drop? Strange feeling.

Edited grammar.

You could always tell your kids you're a live-streamer since you would be on camera: http://thetenthwatch.com/feed/

> Thomas Parnell, UQ's first Professor of Physics, created the experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties...The experiment was set up as a demonstration and is not kept under special environmental conditions

so in other words, it's not really an experiment. Still a nice demonstration, but I guess they're not measuring anything.

And to all the people saying "set up a camera", sure, but that's not the same as seeing a drop fall. Be a nice demonstration to set up at home next to your bonsai tree (much earlier in life than I am able to currently)

> 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.

3 years to cool? is there any reason to think it didn't reach room temp much more quickly, like in a day? I know for telescope lenses they cool the glass very slowly, but that's externally imposed to avoid warping.

> it's not really an experiment

Of course it is. It's not a controlled experiment, but it's still an experiment.

> 3 years to cool?

That might have been a tad excessive, but waiting that long does remove any possibility that the observed behavior was due to residual heat.

Also information here (along with other interesting stuff)…

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pitch-drop-experiment

that article hints that somebody did see a drip drop, it says it occurred during a beaker change and they extended the time for the next drop to 14 yrs out

I love how absolutely massive the drops are, as collected in the other beaker.

For a few semesters I used to walk past that most weeks to go to lectures, always had a look but the drop didn’t happen until a bit over a year after I graduated!

How do they know the pitch is a homogeneous substance, and remains that way?

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