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Tar Pitch Drop Captured On Camera
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."
Must be a slow news day.
Didn't you notice that the titration device was made of glass and showed zero sign of change? That's because glass isn't an amorphous solid.
Are you done yet in there, Grandpa?
Cheers,
Matt
The video was not too bad, far less boring than baseball.
Glass bubbles do no rise in panes of glass. Glass is not a liquid.
http://io9.com/the-glass-is-a-liquid-myth-has-finally-been-destroyed-496190894
Why does the funnel clamped to the stand move just at the moment of the breakage? I call shenanigans!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
“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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Does this mean that tar-based road surfaces are slowly flowing downhill?
Not so slowly, now that it's summertime.
Nobody seems to be able to decide what the heck glass is.
Actually the Nature article on the pitch drop states:
"Scientists used to believe glass to be a slow-moving liquid as well — in part because old church window panes are thicker at the bottom — but it is now considered a solid."
and points to this as a reference. Zhao, J., Simon, S. L. & McKenna, G. B. Nature Communications
Nature is a fairly reputable journal so I think I'll go with glass as a solid for the time being.
The issue regarding the windows panes appears to be that the differing thicknesses from one side of the window to the other is because of the manufacturing method. Also they put the thicker side at the bottom in order to prevent breakage because they weren't idiots.
The cathedral glass reports have nothing to do with glass flowing and everything to do with how glass was made hundreds of yeas ago.
Well, they tried but the camera had a glass lens and went out of focus for some reason.
I read a blog by a guy who had walked across the United States, from the Atlantic in Georgia, to the Pacific in California. He crossed Midland TX in August, and noted that during the middle of the afternoon, walking down the highway, while traffic was low, there was this odd constant popping/crackling sound. He finally stood still and investigated it for a while, and discovered that it was the road tar making the sounds as is slowly boiled in the summer sun. little bubbles would form, bulge out the surface, and then burst with a tiny 'pop'. I don't know if this answers your question, but it seemed to be a good time to tell that story.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.