So, let’s say I somehow got enough mercury to fill an entire swimming pool. Not a real large one, just big enough to do some laps in. Now, if I dove right in, could I even swim in it? Logic says yes, because it is a lot denser than I am. But would it be easy? Would it be so dense that they act of trying to move through it wastes too much energy?
Now, the other part. Let’s say I can swim in it, and had a constant supply of food and water, and when I get tired there is a harness thing to keep me floating so I can sleep, so I’m spending 24 hours a day in my mercury pool. How long before I get mercury poisoning? I’m not sure if they even know how much mercury causes poisonation (yes, I just made that word up), but I would think it wouldn’t be that much, and being submerged in a pool of it could poison somone mighty quick.
You’d have trouble swimming in it because you’d be mostly floating above the surface. I’ll do some calcs, but I remember my school physics teacher pouring out a beaker full of mercury (it would never be allowed today) and dropping in a steel ball bearing - it appeared to float more than half out of the water (and your body is less dense than steel).
Right; Assuming that the human body is about the same density as seawater (not entirely unreasonable), mercury is a little more than thirteen times the density.
Therefore, in order to provide enough upthrust for you to float, only one-thirteenth of your total body mass need be submerged (or put another way, more than 90% of your body is above the surface) - you’re very much more on the pool of mercury than in it.
I’ll let someone far more qualified deal with the issue of how quickly you would poisonizationificated, but I know that at least a significant part of the scary public image of mercury is to do with how it affects developing organisms - the toxic effects on fully-grown humans are not insignificant, but are only part of the picture.
Swimming in the mercury would be like paddling along on an inflatable matress on water. It’d take substantially less effort than swimming in water, because there’s so much less submerged surface area to drag on, and because it requires no effort at all to stay afloat.
Your swimming strokes ought to be more efficient also because you’re reacting against more mass, although some of the effect might be limited by your actual arm strength and surface drag effects etc.
Related Q: I’ve heard that latex lab gloves, when touched by mercury, become a highway into the skin, transmitting mercury into the body. I heard that a couple people died from this because they had a pile of mercury sent right itno the system, and there was really nothing anyone could do. This true?
You are thinking of organic mercury compounds like methyl mercury. These penetrate the skin very easily and ae very toxic.
Elemental mercury on the other hand does not penetrate the skin as well. The main route of poisoning would be inhalation of the vapours if you were going for a dip.
[excuse the hijack]
A problem with gloves is that you need the right glove for the substance you are handling. Some gloves have a high permeability to one substance and not another - the converse may be true for another substance. A latex glove may offer a false sense of security. In this case the researcher spilled dimethyl mercury onto her glove and this slowly penetrated thee glove and was release through her skin. Perhaps if she had spilled it onto a bare hand she would have washed it off immediately. If you ever spill something toxic on a latex glove, take it off immediately and replace the glove with a new one. But you should always be aware of the permeability of various glove types to different chemicals.
Weird question, but interesting. It would be fun to try.
When I was just a youngster in the late '60s, my father had a quart jar about half full of mercury. It was shockingly heavy, and fun to play with. He used to let me have a teaspoon or so to roll around in my hands sometimes. He did warn me not to swallow it or put it in my eyes, but I guess he didn’t know how dangerous it could be.
Then again, this is the same dad that brought home Agent Orange to kill some runaway bamboo in our back yard. (He was working at an Army ammunition plant at the time.) No wonder I turned out like I did.
The thread is already hijacked. I once saw a C-119 Flying Boxcar from a defoliant squadron, the guys who dropped agent orange. The inscription over the door:
Could you? Don’t forget that you are on top of a liquid that cannot resist shear. When you push off with your foot, your foot would go backwards rather than propelling you forward. It would be like ice. Poisonous melted ice, but slippery nonetheless.
Oddly, you can swallow mercury without any serious medical implications. As we’re (or I’m) on strange mercury facts the term ‘mad as a hatter’ originated from hat makers using lots of mercury and going mad from it.
