I love this idea from the School of Physics in Trinity College Dublin.
Many of you will be familiar with its long-running Pitch Tar Drop experiment which began in 1944, when somebody (possibly Ernest Walton) placed some pitch in a funnel and left it there - to see how long it might take for a drop to fall. It's still there - and a new drop falls off on average about once every ten years.
It became a bit of a bit of an overnight media sensation in 2013 when (thanks to work by Shane Bergin and Stefan Hutzler) the fall of a drop was caught by a timelapse camera for the first time. RTÉ News, the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, New Scientist and the National Geographic all covered the story:
So far nobody has ever seen the drop falling with the naked eye - but that could be about to change!
As part of their tercentenary, TCD are running a national programme which will allow schools across the country (one from each county) to run their own version of the experiment. The beautifully designed apparatus will use a specially developed pitch tar, which has a lower viscosity than the Trinity demonstration, so schools won’t have to wait 10 years to see a drop fall. In stead they'll only have to wait a few months. (Probably.)
In this national experiment students will see seemingly solid materials flow, be able to measure the formation of the drop, calculate the viscosity and perhaps even capture that special moment when the drop falls
There are still a few slots open in the programme.
For more details - and to see if there is a still a slot open in your county - click at .... tcd.ie/physics/300/pitch-tar/
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