"89 years have passed since Thomas Parnell (...) wanted to demonstrate to the students the liquid nature of pitch. When it is cold, this material is so hard it could be hammered; nonetheless it is still a liquid. Now, to show that a material is liquid, there is nothing better to pour it into a funnel to see it drip. In fact, the pitch really does that: however, a little slower than the liquids we are used to. Today those students (who in the meantime we presume graduated, besides those as dense as the pitch) have seen just 8 drops falling, with the patient yet incessant rate of a drop every six-twelve years.
Mainstone took charge of the experiment on his 2nd day of work, in 1961, and today still waits to see his first drop fall: the poor man was never present when it happened.
Unfortunately, even if a drop takes a few lustra to form, it only takes 1/10 of a second to fall - 3 billions times less than what it takes to become a drop. The probability of catching the moment in which the drop falls are quite low, especially if you think that people have other things to do - sleeping, taking a shower, combing their hair and go out to dinner with their friends, presumably laughing if some of them complains of how boring their job is.
Thinking he was clever, in the '90s Mainstone installed a webcam in front of the funnel, to record all day and night and finally assist to the moment a drop falls, if not live, at least on streaming.
But destiny had been twice as cruel with this man.
First, causing a malfunction to the camera exactly that night in 2000 in which the drop number 8 met its fate and fell from the exit of the funnel. Then, allowing a camera, at last, to record the moment a drop succumbed to the law of gravity, and eventually fell.
But not in Brisbane.
Instead, exactly on the other side of the globe: in Oxford, where in 1944 an analogous experiment to the Australian one was set up.
The 70-years-old Mainstone, however, does not surrender; he has already found among his colleagues of Queensland someone who, after his death, will keep following the experiment."
- Marco Malvaldi, "L'infinito tra parentesi"
Translation by me, because apparently this book has not been translated in English so I apologize for any eventual mistake. It's 1:23AM, I'm tired but I truly wanted to share this piece from a book I'm loving. I can't wait to finish it so I can write a decent review. It's truly a pity that we don't seem to have an English version of this book.
#sciencecommunication #scicom #marcomalvaldi #malvaldi #book #bookclub #chemistry #physics #reading
Let’s try this again. Where you at #fediverse? Boosts welcome so we can get the best sample size.
Okay this might be a long post 
One thing that I realised is making #twittermigration harder for people to switch is because the whole concept can feel daunting & overwhelming for non-tech savvy people.
With Twitter to them it was straight forward and easy to find topics they enjoy but with mastodon its a bit different.
So if you're new to mastodon or you want to introduce someone to mastodon here are some tips, useful sites & tools:
### Tips:
- Choosing a home instance isn't as importance as it seems, don't overthink it. Yes moderation rules & policies may differ but they all have one thing in common: Be a decent human. You **always** have the option to migrate your account to a new instance.
- Toots (or posts if you think toots are cringe 
) are what we call micro-blogging instead of tweets
- You’re supposed to "boost" AKA "reblog" toots that you like.Since Mastodon does not have an algorithm that surfaces toots that have been liked a lot, boosting is the best way to help spread stuff that you like, and to show appreciation. (credit to @orsvarn for this comment)
- Another way to fill your timeline with content you enjoy is to: Find other people with similar interests, follow them, favourite their posts, boost their posts, use hashtags. rinse, repeat. (credit to @garry)
- If you ever feel yourself getting sucked into arguments on the #Fediverse, you might want to take advantage of the instance mute/block feature!
Instances tend to foster a culture, so if you find people from a specific site tend to be bothering you, muting/blocking that instance will keep other members of that community from bothering you as well.
- Finally do not share private/sensitive information via DMs on Mastodon. Direct Messages are not E2E. **Keep it in mind**
### Useful tools & resources:
[Twitodon](https://twitodon.com/) - Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon
[FediFinder](https://fedifinder.glitch.me/)- Similar to Twitodon
[Fedi Tips](https://fedi.tips/) - an informal, unofficial guide for non-technical people who want to use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse
[Fedi Directory](https://fedi.directory) - A human-curated small selection of accounts to spice up your timeline.
[Trunk](https://communitywiki.org/trunk) -Trunk allows you to mass-follow a bunch of people in order to get started with Mastodon or any other platform on the Fediverse
[Fediverse.info](https://fediverse.info/explore/people) -growing list of people and topics can help you discover mutual interests with people around the world
**Mobile Apps:**
[Metatext for iOS 
](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/metatext/id1523996615)
[Tusky for Android 
](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keylesspalace.tusky&hl=en&gl=USt)
Lastly if you are interested in setting up your own instance you can learn via https://learnfoss.org/ its completely free and its made by the wonderful @stux
I apologize for the long post lol, just hope this helps anyones transition over 
