Tar Pitch Drop Captured On Camera 142
New submitter Ron024 sends this news from Nature:
"After 69 years, one of the longest-running laboratory investigations in the world has finally captured the fall of a drop of tar pitch on camera for the first time. A similar, better-known and older experiment in Australia missed filming its latest drop in 2000 because the camera was offline at the time. The Dublin pitch-drop experiment was set up in 1944 at Trinity College Dublin to demonstrate the high viscosity or low fluidity of pitch — also known as bitumen or asphalt — a material that appears to be solid at room temperature, but is in fact flowing, albeit extremely slowly. ... The Trinity College team has estimated the viscosity of the pitch by monitoring the evolution of this one drop, and puts it in the region of 2 million times more viscous than honey, or 20 billion times the viscosity of water. The speed of formation of the drop can depend on the exact composition of the pitch, and environmental conditions such as temperature and vibration."
Ok.... (Score:2, Interesting)
....now do that with glass
Why does the equipment move? (Score:5, Interesting)
money quote (Score:5, Interesting)
“I have been examining the video over and over again,” Mainstone says, ”and there were a number of things about it that were really quite tantalizing for a very long time pitch-drop observer like myself.”....Mainstone, who has spent most of his life waiting to see a drop fall with his own eyes, congratulated the Trinity College team.
Now disprove the glass pane urban legend (Score:3, Interesting)
Claim B: Claim A is an urban legend. citation 1 [unl.edu] citation 2 [stackexchange.com] and you can find more on the net.
Claim C: Claim B is an urban legend.
Now can someone set up some cameras and prove Claim C? That would be supercool, one level recursive urban legend.
Glass (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Tar Roads (Score:5, Interesting)