It took them 13 years to finally capture on camera a single drop of the world's slowest-moving drop - a bitumen, or asphalt drop. That's very very slow, but it sure moves.
No wonder, you find the tarred road moving a little bit after few years, and it moves much faster than 13 years due to the vehicular weight it is holding on a daily basis.
Exactly how this experiment can benefit mankind, I don't know but for the sake of reading, here it goes:
Fall of a drop of tar pitch caught on camera for the first time. Image source: Discovery News
Slowest drop caught on camera
The second-longest running science experiment in history has just yielded its strange result: a sticky, black drop of pitch.
Set up in 1944 at Trinity College Dublin, the experiment is meant to reveal the strange properties of bitumen -- pitch, or asphalt -- which appears solid at room temperature but is in fact flowing very, very slowly.
At around 5 o'clock in the afternoon on July 11, 2013, physicist Shane Bergin and colleagues recorded what Nature described as one of the most eagerly anticipated and exhilarating drips in science.
“We were all so excited,” Bergin told Nature. “It’s been such a great talking point, with colleagues eager to investigate the mechanics of the break, and the viscosity of the pitch.”
The Trinity College team estimates the pitch to be about 2 million times more viscous than honey, or 20 billion times the viscosity of water.
The origin of the experiment is lost in history, although a similar experiment at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, set up in 1927, is tagged by Guinness World Records as the world’s longest running lab experiment.
More details, go to Nature News
No wonder, you find the tarred road moving a little bit after few years, and it moves much faster than 13 years due to the vehicular weight it is holding on a daily basis.
Exactly how this experiment can benefit mankind, I don't know but for the sake of reading, here it goes:
Fall of a drop of tar pitch caught on camera for the first time. Image source: Discovery News
Slowest drop caught on camera
The second-longest running science experiment in history has just yielded its strange result: a sticky, black drop of pitch.
Set up in 1944 at Trinity College Dublin, the experiment is meant to reveal the strange properties of bitumen -- pitch, or asphalt -- which appears solid at room temperature but is in fact flowing very, very slowly.
At around 5 o'clock in the afternoon on July 11, 2013, physicist Shane Bergin and colleagues recorded what Nature described as one of the most eagerly anticipated and exhilarating drips in science.
“We were all so excited,” Bergin told Nature. “It’s been such a great talking point, with colleagues eager to investigate the mechanics of the break, and the viscosity of the pitch.”
The Trinity College team estimates the pitch to be about 2 million times more viscous than honey, or 20 billion times the viscosity of water.
The origin of the experiment is lost in history, although a similar experiment at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, set up in 1927, is tagged by Guinness World Records as the world’s longest running lab experiment.
More details, go to Nature News
3 comments:
13 years?! Wow. Cool.
I'm more interested in slow more stuff though. Not slow stuff. You got me? Wakakaa.
woah. very interesting! apa lagi yang nampak macam statik tapi bergerak ye?
Arms - ok, I'll pretend to understand
gadisbunga - I read somewhere, kaca pun bergerak tapi lebih lambat
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