Professor John Mainstone is the custodian of the longest running science experiment in the world. The experiement designed to show that pitch, a resin that appears to be completely solid can be shattered into shards with a hammer is actually a liquid.
A liquid approximately 230 billion times more viscous than water. The experiment started in 1927 by Professor Thomas Parnell, the first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane:
The pitch was warmed and poured into a glass funnel, with the bottom of the steam sealed. Three years were allowed for the pitch to consolidate, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date the pitch has been allowed to flow out of the funnel and a record kept of the dates when drops fell [...] The pitch in its funnel is not kept under any special conditions, so its rate of flow varies with normal, seasonal changes in temperature.
Parnel watched three of those drops fall before he died in the 60s, then Professor Mainstone took over. Since then, he has not been very lucky. He missed the five drops that fell down since he started to watch the experiment. now he's waiting for the ninth drop in the experiment. Hopefully it will happen soon.
[The Pitch Drop Experiment and Wikipedia via Daily Mail]
