Longest Running Lab Experiment

In 1927 Thomas Parnell, a physics professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, set out to show his students that tar pitch, is so brittle that it can be smashed to pieces with a hammer, is in fact a highly viscous fluid. It flows at room temperature it just takes 85 years.

Via smp.uq.edu.au

Eighty five years a dollop of the pitch fell from the funnel’s stem. Nine years after that, another long black glob broke into the beaker. Parnell recorded the second drop but did not live to see the third, in 1954. By then, his experiment had been squirreled away in a dusty corner of the physics department.

You can see a live webcam at the link below.