# Mercury

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mercury/65166>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 12, 2001, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mercury/65166 "2001-05-12T03:23:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lady\_Ice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f1d935/32.png) [@Lady\_Ice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lady_Ice)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2001, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mercury/65166/1 "2001-05-12T03:23:42Z")

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Recently in my town, several children found a large amount of mercury in an abandoned garage. They were all contaminated, including the daughter of someone I know. I know there has to be a use for mercury besides thermomators, does anyone know of any? Why would someone have a large amount (several pounds) of mercury lying around in their garage?

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**Author:** ![pluto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f08c70/32.png) [@pluto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pluto)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2001, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mercury/65166/2 "2001-05-12T04:49:33Z")

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I’m sure there are a lot of industrial uses for mercury (or why would there be so many cases of exposure?) but the only one I know about is used in extracting gold from ore.

According to Mark Twain (_Roughing It_), when he was a gold miner in Nevada they would run the gold-bearing ore through mercury. Any gold in the sand would be dissolved by the mercury and it was later recovered by (I think) boiling the mercury away. Twain said he lost a gold ring by wearing it while participating in this process.

I’m sure someone else has information from AFTER the Civil War.

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**Author:** ![pluto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f08c70/32.png) [@pluto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pluto)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2001, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mercury/65166/3 "2001-05-12T04:54:21Z")

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Oh, and, um, dentistry. That’s right. I forgot.

I think the famous Michelson-Morley experiment was conducted on a granite block floating in mercury as an isolation platform.