Big News for the World's Longest Experiment

We just recently published an article about the World's Longest Experiment here, and now the drop science geeks have been waiting for finally came. After decades of waiting, a drop was finally recorded on a video footage.

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The pitch drop experiment holds the Guinness World Record for the longest experiment ever to be held. It has gained a lot of popularity because of the dedication of the people behind it, and with the recent social media boom it had gained a new wider and younger audience. These resulted in a good kind of pressure and the people behind the experiment became more focused on capturing the drop.

The last time the pitch dropped back in 2000 it wasn't captured on video because there was a power outage in the University of Queensland in Australia (this is where the experiment have been running since 1930).

But this time, the pitch drop was successfully captured on video to the joy of science geeks all around the world.

A little late for one person

The news came a little late for one person though. Thomas Parnell set the experiment up to show that although pitch appears to be solid (shattering under the force of a hammer at room temperature) it is actually a very viscous liquid. 

John Mainstone oversaw the experiment for over 50 years until his death August of last year. He missed observing the drops fall three times – by one day back in 1977, by around five minutes in the year 1988 and, in 2000, when the webcam that was recording the pitch was hit by a power outage that lasted for around 20 minutes.

But thanks to his efforts, and the team behind this experiment, the science community embarked on this decades long experiment and confirmed that pitch is, indeed, a liquid.

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