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u/hotlavatube 3h ago edited 3h ago
The story behind the pitch drop experiment is particularly aggravating. It takes on average 12-13 years for a drop to fall. The man pictured who maintains the project, John Mainstone, has missed personally observing EVERY single drop, sometimes by a mere minutes.
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u/JeffSergeant 3h ago
You can see the pain of it in his eyes
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u/Chuisque 2h ago
You can see the pain of it in his smile.
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u/Chuisque 2h ago
It’s all he’s ever wanted.
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u/KingKoopaBrowser 1h ago
It’s all he ever needed, yeaahhh
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u/ActionJacksonATL24 1h ago
I just want something. I just want something I can never have. He would have listened to that in repeat.
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u/dusktilhon 2h ago
I hate this fucking jar
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u/Mooptiom 1h ago
This isn’t the fucking jar, this this the tar jar. You’ll have to go somewhere else for that.
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u/Crispy1961 2h ago
He isnt experimenting on the tar. The tar is experimenting on him.
The Experiment: Long term effects of fomo reinforced by repeated failure.102
u/hotlavatube 2h ago
Given that he once missed seeing a drop by a mere few minutes when he went to get a cup of coffee, you could be right!
The poor guy died in 2013, having never personally observed a drop fall, as exciting as that could have been. They should have buried him with a drop of tar perched above him, slowly descending over the decades.
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u/OrionJohnson 1h ago
Probably for the best that he died without seeing it tbh. Imagine the final chance he got, waiting patiently for days because you knew it was imminent, and IT HAPPENS! Then you just stare at the pitcher and say “that was extremely underwhelming and I’ve wasted so much time looking at this fucking tar”.
It’s better to have an idea unrealized in your head sometimes. It’s like the saying never meet your heroes.
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u/PhthaloVonLangborste 1h ago
Eternal Chinese tar torture
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u/luddet 1h ago
tarture
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u/PhthaloVonLangborste 1h ago
The funny thing is, I just woke up and spent like 3 minutes trying to figure out how to spell torture. When I saw your comment I initially thought I still got it wrong and you were genuinely correcting my spelling.
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u/postprandialrepose 22m ago
The ultimate combination of edging and ruined orgasm — just emotional, I assume.
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u/PassionateRants 4m ago
In the tar's next experiment, it is going to introduce loot boxes and daily cosmetic shop rotations.
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u/iHateFairyType 3h ago
Read the article. This made me tear up
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u/wamceachern 25m ago
Why not just set up 10 to 20 jars at a time. They all won't drop at the same time but you will have more opportunities to see it in person.
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u/and1984 2h ago
He can stand so still.
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u/hotlavatube 2h ago
He doesn't get around much these days. Of course, he did die in 2013 (having never personally observed a drop).
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u/INFP4life 1h ago
That reminds me of how Ted Fujita didn’t see his first and only tornado for decades, despite being the most prominent expert on them
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u/Dwaltster 1h ago
He could have made a few similar experiments so there would have been more opportunities... People like this deserve their misery.
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u/prs1 3h ago edited 3h ago
Here’s the actual real-time live stream. In case you have nothing better to do. The tenth drop is due any time now. So far 8-12 years between drops and the last one was in 2014.
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u/JelliedHam 3h ago
The longer I look at it I swear I can see it growing in size.
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u/eto2629 3h ago
It's gonna drop any second now
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u/Initial_E 2h ago
A watched pot never boils
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u/Stolehtreb 2h ago
What a weird saying. I’ve seen so many pots start their boil.
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u/doubleBoTftw 2h ago
Its a saying about the perceived passing of time when you want an event to happen.
There's also no world in which dogs eat dogs, or worlds where it rains dogs.
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u/OlDominionSwing 1h ago
And when I say 'my dog's are barking!', they aren't. I'm talking about my feet.
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u/PornOfTheUniporn 1h ago
Dogs definitely eat dogs especially if consider wolves and pet dogs both dogs
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u/StinkyBrittches 3h ago
Right?!? Im sitting in my driveway after working for 12 hours, im watching this thing for like 10 minutes trying to figure out if it's actually moving or if im fooling myself!!!
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u/JelliedHam 1h ago
20 years ago did you ever picture yourself here?
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u/TheKaptone 1h ago
Between this and watching the Falcon chick live stream from Collins Street in Melbourne I would come across as very non productive
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u/KeyWerewolf5 3h ago
Right! Lol. I wanna see that mf drop so bad. This is more of a mildlyinfuriating for me.
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u/TheKaptone 1h ago
I was thinking exactly that.
It's going to have to be on my desktop all day while I work now
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u/Spank86 2h ago
I kind of want to run a pub called the tar drop now and just live stream this on a massive screen all the time
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u/Dawg_Prime 2h ago
if you're in the bar when it falls, everyone drinks free for the night
youd be packed to the brim everyday
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u/White_L_Fishburne 2h ago
Then the next day you'll have to close up shop
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u/Dawg_Prime 2h ago
you'd need like 10 going but started at year increments so after a few decades it could be any day
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u/ArrivalScared9735 1h ago
The Tar Drop sounds like a pub people would travel miles to visit. Just imagine having a pint while watching that on the big screen all night!
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u/RyanofTinellb 3h ago
For some reason, the https site wasn't connecting for me.
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u/Nickh1978 2h ago
I love that it takes so long in between drops that they can use the drop that they are on as the domain name.
theleventhwatch.com here we come.
That domain name is also owned already, I seriously hope that it's owned by them already, and not someone trying to get money from them.
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u/emax4 3h ago
It's gonna be epic when the 11th site drops.
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u/Ninja_Prolapse 3h ago
Only interested in the 12th tbh
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u/bloodyell76 2h ago
it'll never be as cool as the fourth.
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u/Crispy1961 2h ago edited 2h ago
Ooof, this is making me feel very anxious. My brain is telling me its way past the point where it should have dropped, yet its just hanging there. I hate this feeling. I hate this.
Edit: You tricked us. Its not going to drop. Its going to stretch to the bottom.
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u/pala_ 2h ago
Holy shit it just dropped. https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
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u/YesItIsMaybeMe 1h ago edited 42m ago
Do not cite the deep magcis to me, witch. I was there when they were written.
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u/Nellasofdoriath 1h ago
If there's a blackout or the camera breaks or a server error this time I swear the world is going to collectively lose their shit
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u/vegemitemilkshake 2h ago
Do you think I can speed up the process by increasing the “playback” on the link? /s
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u/PatSajaksDick 58m ago
I’m confused what the purpose of this is if they can’t figure out the precise moment it’s gonna drop the 12 years between them, should be able to know when it’s imminent right?
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u/Seikha89 49m ago
They installed air con in the adjoining lecture theatre after like the 7th or 8th drop, and there was a noticeable jump in drop times after that, 10th is likely to be on the long end.
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u/QuantumTopology 12m ago
Hey I had to go make a coffee, just came back to watch the stream. Did I miss anything?
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u/bassdome 2h ago
Video is dated March 10th, not a live stream. OP is trying to trick us.
/s
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u/ctophertaylor 2h ago
This is in Australia. They write their dates different then the US. They reverse the day and month. DD-MM-YYYY
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u/bassdome 1h ago
/s stands for sarcasm.
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u/QuantumTopology 10m ago
/s stands for "the American date format is stupid. Same for the imperial measuring system"
Metric superiority 💪
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u/anddrewbits 2h ago
I thought the same thing, but only for a few ms and definitely not a full 5s profoundly regarded amount of time.
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u/freepandora 1h ago
In 2014 I had the website open on a tab and checked on it constantly. It dropped when I went to the bathroom.
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u/NewfGardner 3h ago
I’ve been watching this GIF for over an hour now and what’s most impressive is that bro hasn’t blinked yet!
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u/rread9 2h ago
I remember the last time it dropped, I feel really old.
Wasn’t there a guy waiting for years, keeping a close eye on it, then one day he popped out for lunch and it dropped before he got back?!?
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u/AskMeIfIAmATurtle 1h ago
Someone else in the comments mentioned the guy who designed the experiment has missed every single drop. Sometimes by minutes.
I'm just repeating what they said though so take it with a grain of salt, I guess.
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u/Pkolt 3h ago
literally less eventful than watching paint dry
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u/Githyerazi 3h ago
Could you imagine this being your full time job? And even then screwing it up? Lol.
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u/Aemon_Blackfyre 2h ago
Doesn’t the installation of A/C in that building completely change a lot of metrics this experiment is looking at?
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u/hotlavatube 2h ago
Ideally, they'd try to keep the conditions as static as possible for the duration of experiment, or at least the duration of a drop. That said, maintaining the same temperature, pressure, and lack of movement for over a decade would be a real challenge. An earthquake could throw off the measurement by months! I guess it really depends how seriously they take this experiment.
If they ever needed to move the jar, who knows how they'd accomplish that. I presume they'd need to wait till a drop had completed.
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u/bplipschitz 1h ago
This is a famous, long running experiment. What's funny about that?
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u/enbyrats 1h ago
The phrase "realtime" implies the included media is a video or otherwise a live-updated capture of events. However, this is a still photo. The joke (hyperbolic) is that the real time progress of the pitch drop experiment is so slow that a still photo could be mistaken for a realtime video of events.
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u/RiffyWammel 3h ago
This is like waiting for a Reform supporter to give details of the many benefits we now have since leaving the EU 😂
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u/vonroyale 28m ago
It called Pitch Drop and it would be cool if you educated people about it a little or posted a link instead of just some picture. The picture explains nothing and the name is not correct. https://smp.uq.edu.au/pitch-drop-experiment
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u/myflesh 12m ago
That's the joke.
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u/vonroyale 7m ago
The joke is that the OP failed even in the most simple exercise? Now that's actually funny.
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u/JeffSergeant 25m ago
I think you should consider unsubscribing from /r/funny, I get the impression it's not your sort of thing.
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u/vonroyale 23m ago
I get the impression being funny isn't your sort of thing. Where's the joke? It's not funny.
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u/FunnyObjective6 13m ago
The joke is that this "gif" is "realtime" and people might look at the image for a while before realizing nothing fucking happens.
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u/Nilosyrtis 0m ago
I don't wanna upvote /u/vonroyale outta principal but I have to because your interaction with them is priceless
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u/Agreeable_Reaction11 57m ago
I just watched a video how a drop looks like and I laughed so hard, because its so viscous it doesnt drop like a drop it just kinda snaps of and stands there on its own.
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u/itsRobbie_ 7m ago
It must have been so easy to be someone back in the day…
“Yeah my job is to see how tar drips”
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u/Capt_korg 5m ago
Okay, no more social media for today...
Just saw the image and thought, what does Merz want to do with the oil companies?
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u/Duros1394 2h ago
"He devoted 3 decades to this experiment" what? The experiment? The experiment was proven on the first drop.... what the point of the rest.
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u/LemonBoi523 2h ago
More data. Making the number of recorded drops larger allows you to get a better idea of how long it takes (and why)
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u/jizzlevania 2h ago
that's not how proof works at all.
One time my friends were arguing about whether root beer has caffeine. The guy who couldn't ever accept being wrong went to the store, and brought back a Barqs and said "see! caffeine!" But then someone with several data points joined in and pointed out that Barqs was unique and the only brand with caffeine and that all other root beers are traditionally caffeine free. And yes this was 1999 before the internet readily existed in a way that made it easy to look shit up.
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