It took 69 years, but at last we’ve seen the pitch drop. One of the world’s longest-running experiments climaxed last week, when a finger-sized bulb of pitch (bitumen) separated from its parent bulk and dropped into a beaker. For the first time ever, this fleeting event has been recorded on video.
The pitch drop experiment was set up at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in 1944. The original version of the experiment, at the University of Queensland in Australia, has been running since 1930, but various glitches have prevented that team from actually seeing a drop separate.
“No one has ever seen a drop fall anywhere in the world,” says Trinity’s Shane Bergin, whose webcam recorded the event on 11 July. “It’s one of the oldest experiments – an oddity, a curiosity.”
If there was ever a video begging for a dubstep remix, this would be it.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
