Professor Thomas Parnell, the first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland (Australia), set up an experiment in 1927 to show that some everyday materials exhibit unsual properties.
The experiment in question was to show that pitch – then used to waterproof boat hulls, and normally brittle at room temperature – will drip, albeit slowly, if placed in a funnel and left to its own devices. The pitch was poured (warm) into a sealed glass funnel and first left for three years to settle. Then the funnel stem was cut, allowing the pitch to drip. The eighth drop fell on November 28, 2000, allowing experimenters to calculate that the pitch has a viscosity approximately 100 billion times that of water.
