# School goes into lockdown and hazmat crew called over a thermometer. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 5, 2012, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083 "2012-12-05T17:01:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083/41 "2012-12-07T07:33:11Z")
I’m another who played with mercury as a kid. It was fun to chase it around a tabletop, hold it in your hands, and so on. My high school science lab used mercury thermometers. If you broke one, you were expected to pay for it. And you’d have to clean it up, which involved collecting it in a dustpan, and putting it in the trash. A few thermometers broke in class; they were cleaned up and paid for. Having played with mercury as a kid, as I did, and not suffering from mercury poisoning right now, I’d suggest calling in a Hazmat Team for an unbroken mercury thermometer, is overkill. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Bird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Little\_Bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Bird)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083/42 "2012-12-07T15:48:20Z")
I broke a mercury thermometer in highschool and the teacher just gave me paper towels to clean it up. I ended up keeping the little bead of mercury in a clear film canister…I wonder where that ended up… Anyway, that was in 1997, so clearly this mercury mania is a really new phenomena. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083/43 "2012-12-07T15:50:18Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > : > > Doesn’t every home have at least three old fever thermometers stuffed in a drawer somewhere? ] No, because I am not old 😉 We have one digital one, and when that craps out we buy a new one. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083/44 "2012-12-08T03:14:10Z")
Does that thermometer even contain mercury? I’ve read (in Mad Science, I think) that new thermometers don’t use mercury, they contain a gallium alloy instead. Here, look: [Galinstan - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan) Also in Mad Science, the author said schools are evacuated over a broken thermometer, and I was wondering how common this was. In school the teacher had a beaker of mercury with an inverted test tube inside to simulate a barometer. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2012, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083/45 "2012-12-09T04:10:23Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > But I see no description of the breakage in this thread. Surely, you’re not speaking of an _unbroken_ thermometer? 😕 I thought this as well. Even if the kid brought a jar of mercury to school, you think the reaction would be for the security to take the mercury to the office and have it disposed of properly and tell the kid what a dumbass he is. But a thermometer??? Didn’t anyone (the security, the principal, the 911 operator, the police, the Hazmat officer, anyone?) stop and say, “Wait, we aren’t sending the army to the school over a fucking thermometer!”? I guess not. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2012, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083/46 "2012-12-09T04:24:51Z")
> [@Dr\_Doom](#): > > Maybe they’re concerned about some of the kids designing and producing headwear whilst descending into insanity, as a result? Why, what an odd thing to say. You must be mad as a hatter! ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2012, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083/47 "2012-12-09T04:41:35Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > In school the teacher had a beaker of mercury with an inverted test tube inside to simulate a barometer. We had one of those in our high school chemistry lab. Ours didn’t just simulate a barometer though; it was an actual barometer–a glass tube full of mercury had been inverted in the beaker, and there was a scale beside it, so you could watch and track barometric changes. But ultimately, it was a beaker of mercury, exposed to the open air inside a classroom. Nobody complained–on the contrary, we were fascinated by our barometer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/school-goes-into-lockdown-and-hazmat-crew-called-over-a-thermometer/643083.md?page=2)