- The ‘pitch drop experiment’ – recorded in Guinness World Records as the “world’s longest continuously running laboratory experiment”
- Expected to continue for at least another hundred years
The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar that is the world’s thickest known fluid and was once used for waterproofing boats. Thomas Parnell, The University of Queensland’s (UQ) first Professor of Physics, created the experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties.
Born in Northamptonshire, England on 5 July 1881 and passed away on 1 September 1948 in Brisbane. During WW1, he served as Lieutenant Parnell in the Australian Imperial Force – 2nd Field Artillery Brigade on the Western Front. He was appointed to Australian Corps headquarters as gas officer and his duties included defusing unexploded gas-shells. From 1928 – 29 he was President of the Royal Society of Queensland.
In 1934 he was one of the 92 founding shareholders of Queensland Holiday Resorts (now Binna Burra Lodge). His Binna Burra shares were handed down to his son, Thomas Meredith Parnell, (1926-2012) who became Professor in Electrical Engineering at UQ.
In 2005 Prof Parnell was posthumously awarded the Ig Nobel prize for Physics for the pitch drop experiment, along with the experiment’s then custodian, John Mainstone.
In 1927 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. Since then, the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel – so slowly that it took eight years for the first drop to fall, and more than 40 years for another five to follow.
The Lamington National Park (1915) and Binna Burra’s links to UQ go back some two decades before the company was in incorporated in 1934.
No doubt, along with the first campers at Binna Burra in 1933 and 1934, Prof Parnell’s experiment was a topic for interesting chat around the campfire!
Watch the ‘Pitch Drop Experiment’s live feed: http://thetenthwatch.com/
The information above has been drawn from:
