In a corridor of the university stands a glass funnel of black pitch. It looks like stone, but it flows, and a drop falls only about once every eight years. Professor Okafor, who is seventy-one, has watched it for forty years. Five drops fell, and he missed every one.
The sixth drop was hanging at the end of the funnel. Okafor was retiring. His granddaughter Wen, thirteen, came to stay. She sat on a stool with a thermos and a blanket and watched. Her grandfather fell asleep on the sofa.
At twelve minutes past three the thread stretched and fell with a soft plop. She saw it! "Grandpa, it fell," she said. He wrote in the logbook: "Drop six. 3:12 a.m. Seen by Wen, aged thirteen."
