My son and I were talking about mercury, and I mentioned that, once upon a time, schools would let the kids handle it in science class to learn about very dense liquids. That led to a discussion (query, really) about what mercury feels like. I’m too young to know.
So, how 'bout it? Can you describe it at all? Is it anything like oobleck, the corn starch/water mixture? I understand that’s not really a “liquid”, but a non-newtonian fluid, but it might be the best reference point for us young uns.
Is mercury cold? It is smooth? Will it break apart in your fingers, or is the surface tension strong enough that it rolls like a marble in your hand? Does it feel wet? Slimy? Does it feel heavy for its size or light?
I’m not entirely sure if this should go in GQ or IMHO…
You don’t feel it at all. It floats on your hand. When you grab it it splits like it is avoiding grasp. It is room temperature. It was not particularly heavy. It was difficult to control. It is liquidl but not waterlike.
It felt cooler than room temperature. It was much heavier, for its size, than I expected it to be. It stays in a single piece unless you purposefully separate it. It felt neither smooth nor wet; it didn’t really have a palpable texture. Imagine what it might be like to hold a frictionless ball bearing and you’re most of the way there…the slightest motion of your hand sends it dribbling to one side of your palm. It’s almost impossible to keep hold of it without cupping your hand.
(For the record, I’m 24…my junior high science teacher was a bit of an oddball, to say the least.)
It’s not much like oobleck at all. It’s very liquid, but it doesn’t “wet” most surfaces. It behaves a lot like smallish drops of water in a cool Teflon pan; it just beads up tight and rolls around in your palm, like a steel ball bearing that you can squish. Only it’s heavier than steel, about as heavy as a similar amount of gold or lead. I don’t recall it feeling particularly cool or warm at room temperature. If you’re wearing a gold ring when you play with Mercury, the ring will turn silver colored.
The surface tension is strong, so it does tend to stay in a single blob fairly easily, though it splits apart readily if it encounters an obstacle or you poke it with your finger. As long as you just roll a single small blob of it around in the palm of your hand, it’s not unlike doing the same with a small lead fishing sinker.
Is it really dangerous to hold mercury in your bare hand for a short time? I know you shouldn’t breathe its vapors, but surely it doesn’t evaporate so fast that it would hurt you in just a minute or two. Is it absorbed through the skin?
The above descriptions are pretty good. It feels very heavy, has a lot of surface tension, so it stays in one piece. If you have enough in the palm of your hand or an open container, you can stick your finger in it and it will deform without wetting. It feels cool, like any metal, because it is at room temp (below body temp) and conducts heat well. It rolls around with so little friction that it feels frictionless.
I, Myra, have actually handled and played with a marble sized glob of mercury, at the age of 18. I scooped it up outside the high school after somebody dropped a bottle. A whole bunch of kids scooped some up, and nobody thought anything of it. I don’t think any other “official” cleanup was done. This was 1978.
God, have things ever changed. I expect they have to shut the whole town down, call in the National Guard, evacuate everbody, etc. On the other hand, I guess it hasn’t turned me into some kind of drooling idiot. (Although hubby might not agree, especially early some mornings)
It actually felt like what it is: a piece of metal, cold and smooth and quite heavy. Nothing like oobleck. You could roll it around and it would stay together. You could separate it into smaller and smaller globs and then push them back together. As the globs joined, the resulting glob would shimmer and wriggle. It was cool stuff. You could see your face in it.
I don’t know if they used actually mercury as a prop in Terminator 2, but it sure looked like it. Whenever the T2000 “re-integrated” any missing parts, it looked just like the mercury behaviour I’ve seen.
Some, but not enough to pose an immediate risk. Like others in this thread, I played with it barehanded occasionally–something which today would give a Chem teacher apoplexy–and I seem not be suffering the effects of Hg poisoning. It doesn’t evaporate all that readily, so I wouldn’t worry about vapors much, either.
The real danger is that you’ll drop the stuff, and beads of it will roll into a crack somewhere. A one time skin exposure is unlikely to harm you, though exposing it to a cut is probably not a good idea. Repeated exposure even at very low levels is a problem because mercury is a cumulative poison. Which is why you don’t want it lying around exposed to the air. It IS something that you don’t want contaminating your environment, but people tend to have more hysterics about it than it merits.
I don’t think brief exposure is necessarily dangerous. Like many toxins, I expect it’s most risky for young children, infants, and pregnant or nursing mothers. The big deal about Mercury is that it tends to accumulate in the food chain and cause damage through long-term exposure. That’s the big reason why you don’t see new mercury thermometers anymore. One new one isn’t bad at all, but you’ve got a problem after a few million get thrown away.
BTW: Issac Asimov seemed to be a fan of Gallium. It melts at 29.8 degrees C, so he says you can take a chunk of it and melt it into your palm, then play with it like Mercury (only it’s lighter). Asimov didn’t know if Gallium was toxic or not, and apparently we still aren’t entirely sure, but it’s not obviously so. It’s not all that cheap, but you can get it .
It will do both. It will roll in your hand, and break apart in smaller “bubbles” if you press it, cut it, etc… The smaller bit will reassemble in a larger ball as soon as they come into contact.
Neither
I never handled a large enough chunk of it to feel its weight.
And to sum up, handing/ playing with mercury is just fun for a kid. I was taking mine from the old, huge, broken thermometer in the classroom, and enjoyed making it roll/slip (not sure what’s the most accurate term) on my desk, cutting it up in small “perls”, reassembling them, etc…
To echo what everyone else has said - it’s heavy and tends to stay together, although if you drop it it can certainly spatter into itty bitty blobs (which you do want to avoid). As stated, it almost doesn’t have a feel to it at all, despite being heavy. Even though it’s a liquid I had no perception of it being wet. It feels dry, as odd as that sounds, and room temperature.
We had a kid bring a mason jar about 1/3 full of mercury to school. It was amazing just how heavy that was. We played with it and it’s fun as all get out. The current hysteria every time some of it gets spilled on the floor is overkill.
I’ve wondered about that myself, but it’s a bit expensive to obtain some to have around for a toy. Gallium has some other odd properties, too - the solid form exhibits a conchoidal fracture pattern similar to glass - it “chips” like a solid glass object. It’s one of the few substances that expands on solidifying, like water, so you have to leave room for it to do so when pouring the liquid phase into a container.
I just read two very different threads back to back- this one and the one on translating Shakespeare in current English and they both referenced information from Issac Azimov!
