The world's longest running experiment has been happening for almost 100 years and you can watch it live

The world’s slowest experiment has been running for nearly 100 years - and it's far from over.

In 1927, Australian physicist Thomas Parnell created an experiment to illustrate that everyday materials can present some quite surprising properties.

He used a tar-like substance called pitch. It looks solid (almost brittle) and can even break like glass if hit with a hammer - but it's a liquid. Essentially, pitch is the name for any of the highly viscous liquids, such as bitumen, which appear solid but behave like a liquid.

Once used for waterproofing boats, pitch is 100 billion times more viscous than water and two million times more viscous than honey.

In what is known as the Pitch Drop Experiment, Parnell heated the pitch, poured it into a glass funnel, and let it cool and settle for three years.

He then cut the bottom of the funnel, allowing the pitch to start dripping out very, very slowly.

Meaning, the experiment didn't technically start until 1930.

Since then, the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel. The first drop took eight years to fall - talk about watching paint dry!

Here's a quick timeline of the drops:

1938: 1st drop

1946: 2nd drop

1954: 3rd drop

1962: 4th drop

1970: 5th drop

1979: 6th drop

1988: 7th drop

2000: 8th drop

2014: 9th drop

Since its beginning, a total of nine drops have fallen with the latest dating back to April 2014.

Neither Parnell nor the second custodian of the experiment, Professor John Mainstone, ever got to see a drop fall. Mainstone cared for the experiment for 52 years before passing away in 2013, a year before the last drop.

Guinness World Records have crowned it the world's longest running lab experiment (University of Queensland, Australia)

The experiment, which Guinness World Records lists as the world’s longest-running laboratory experiment, is now reaching almost 100 years old.

The scientists overtaking the experiment believe the next drop to fall sometime in the 2020s.

And if you feel like you're missing out on the fun, don't worry, you can catch the experiment live. You can visit it in the foyer of the Parnell Building at the University of Queensland, Australia or you can catch the action online on a live video stream.

The experiment isn't kept in special conditions either - just a display case, allowing the rate of flow of the pitch to vary with seasonal changes in temperature.

More than 35,000 people from some 160 countries are registered to view the stream.

Back in April 2014, over 483 people witnessed the 9th drop via a live webcam as reported by the university.