Geek Alert! How long is the longest continuous running science experiment? Eighty-five years, so far. It all began in 1927 when Thomas Parnell, a physics professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, set out to show his students that tar pitch, a derivative of coal so brittle that it can be smashed to pieces with a hammer, is in fact a highly viscous fluid. It flows at room temperature, albeit extremely slowly. Parnell melted the pitch, poured it into a glass funnel, let it cool (for three years), hung the funnel over a beaker, and waited.
Eight years later …a dollop of the pitch fell from the funnel’s stem. Nine years after that, another long black glob broke into the beaker.
pitch drop