The 2005 Ig Nobel Prizes are out! The physics prize goes went to the University of Queensland:
PHYSICS: John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland, Australia, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 — in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years.
I’ve actually seen this glob of black tar. Little did I know I was looking at an experiment of Nobel proportions! Makes me wish I’d taken a picture of it.