6 ms·
Pitch Drop Experiment
- _pmf_ 7y agoMy dream research job.
- ineedasername 7y ago"Has another drop fallen yet? No." Done working for the day.
- rubidium 7y agoPlus you can work from home: https://livestream.com/accounts/4931571/events/5369913 https://livestream.com/accounts/4931571/events/5369913
- vageli 7y agoWhat a time to be alive. This is incredible. I wonder what those balloons in the case are used for.
- rch 7y agoThat's the older beaker containing the previous drops.
- ineedasername 7y agoI figure you could get away with coming into work in person about once a month or so, status meeting on the state of the developing drop, risk assessment for unexpected drop preparedness, maybe a a quick scrum for an Enterprise suite of "Is there a drop Y/N" management software.
- alwaysanagenda 7y agoThis pitch drop experiment really scratches my itch for pitch.
- chongli 7y agoFor some reason, I find the thought of a pitch drop hanging on (for years and years before falling) very unsettling. I just want it to fall already!
- comboy 7y agoSeems like precisely the thing that so many mobile games are monetizing on.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoNot fair! They discount two longer-running experiments because they were interrupted. Then go on to explain how this experimental procedure was changed halfway through to control for temperature. So really, not the world's longest-running experiment. Not by a century.
- 2zcon 7y agoIt's a pet belief of mine that Guinness World Records are a 'scam'. The big sporting records, like fastest 100 m sprint, are actually tracked by the sports bodies. What say they have in the matter is its own debate (e.g. there's no record for the 150 m, because the IAAF don't sanction a 150 m race, but there was a famous unsanctioned race between winners of the 100 m and 200 m races), particularly in sports with multiple federations or codes, but at least they sometimes have international government funding from which to derive some kind of authority. GWR have nothing but a tacky book, yet we've all been sucked into this notion that it's not an official world record unless they say it is. And what they accept as a record is subject to strict guidelines (i.e. what they're willing to put in a child's Christmas stocking) and dubious rulesets. There are even unbreakable 'first xyz' records and geographically limited 'world' records.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoIts an entertainment book to have in a bar to settle bets. If you have something more convenient/as cheap, let us all know!
- busterarm 7y agoIs today "post a wikipedia article" day?
- carapace 7y ago(I want to tease the Long Now folks about their clock: Why not just make a big pitch drop "water" clock? I know, I know, it's not to their point, and FWIW I love the machines they make, but the reliability and simplicity of a 10,000+ year clock made of pitch has something going for it, ne?)
- jancsika 7y ago> Large droplets form and fall over a period of about a decade. It would be fun to pair this with a program that outputs the amount of liquid collected, with the display delayed by the amount of time it took for the previous droplet to fall.
- peter_d_sherman 7y agoExcerpt: University of Queensland experiment "The best known version[1] of the experiment was started in 1927 by Professor Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, to demonstrate to students that some substances which appear solid are actually highly viscous fluids." Perhaps conversely, perhaps all solid materials are really just liquid... just locked in place by a local stasis field of some sort... call that stasis field time, gravity, magnetism, the electrostatic, or strong or weak nuclear forces... Perhaps the stasis field and the distance of its effect, is also relative to scale... and perhaps all fields are just variations of interia, relative to scale and material...
- somishere 7y agoI walked past this 'experiment' every day for a number of years at UQ in Brisbane (on route to my lunchtime nap in the great court). The glass cabinet is fairly inconspicuous, sitting outside a bunch of small rooms, above a minor thoroughfare. I don't remember exactly how long it took me to take notice and stop to read the inscription (2 years+?) but I was impressed when I did. And it's extraordinary the number of times it has come up in conversation since.
- leoc 7y agoSt. Andrews has one as well, apparently dating to 1927 too. https://books.google.ie/books?id=74PgZAHPw38C&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=%22st.+andrews%22+%22pitch+drop%22&source=bl&ots=lKIjtti0yZ&sig=ACfU3U0ZonS2S7YhxVoa-6Yy9DTp1nKS0Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj0_K-Tmb7nAhWoUhUIHWDAAXkQ6AEwAXoECGEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22st.%20andrews%22%20%22pitch%20drop%22&f=false https://books.google.ie/books?id=74PgZAHPw38C&pg=PA32&lpg=PA... It was on display in the Physics building, and I assume probably still is.
- alister 7y agoWhat, no mention about glass being an even more viscous liquid? I grew up believing the story about medieval church windows being thicker at the bottom because the glass had flowed downward over a period of centuries. It turns out that medieval windows are indeed thicker at the bottom but the part about glass being a "slow liquid" was wrong: These windows are thicker at the bottom owing to the production process. Back during medieval times, a lump of molten glass was rolled, expanded, and flattened before being spun into a disc and cut into panes. These sheets were thicker around the edges and installed such that the heavier side was at the bottom.[1] [1] https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-glass-is-a-liquid-myth-has-finally-been-destroyed-496190894 https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-glass-is-a-liquid-myth-has-final...
- starpilot 7y agonth time i've seen this posted on HN
- woliveirajr 7y agoIt's a good source for a RNG. Just compute if the interval for two consecutive drops is bigger os smaller from the two previous drops. Might block, of course, if you ask _too frequently_ for a new bit.
- zamadatix 7y agoWould be a highly biased random source, only one drop was quicker.