I have thermometers that are not electric. Do they still have mercury in them? They are about 5-10 years old.
I recall from Chem Lab while in college in the early 60s that distillation of Hg (for purification, I presumed) was a REALLY BIG DEAL UNDER STRINGENT AND CONTROLLED CONDITIONS!
PurplePerson, the front cover of most thermostats can be easily pulled off to reveal the inner workings. Try lifting the bottom out away from the wall, then lift the whole thing up. In non-electronic thermostats (but still electric) that I’ve seen, there is a glass tube inside with a glob of mercury. When the temperature increases, it rotates the tube just a little bit, causing the mercury to slide to the other end of the tube. There it shorts together two electric contacts and your air conditioner comes on. You can even see the spark!
Don’t tell your kids, or they’ll be freaked out knowing that there’s mercury being actually used inside their house.
Wolf_meister, not enough… Great choice for a project, though.
My high school chemistry teacher had a very thick-walled gallon jug of mercury. His favourite gag: “Hand me that jug of mercury.” The weight of that jug is left as an excercise for the student.
Ignoring the weight of the jar itself, about 45.3 pounds.
A gallon of water weighs 8 and 1/3 pounds. Since mercury is 13.55 times denser than water, a gallon of mercury should weigh 112.92 pounds, so let’s say 113 pounds !!!
Sorry QED, I think you may be wrong.
HA! That will teach me to read Google links more carefully. I Googled “mercury density” and got 5.43 g/cm[sup]3[/sup]. Turns out that was the planet Mercury. The element is 13.6 g/cm[sup]3[/sup]. The revised weight is therefore 113.4 pounds.
LOL Q.E.D. !!!
Yeah, I, too, played with liquid mercury as a child (from a broken thermometer). Fun!
Got mercury in my teeth (from dental fillings).
Plus, ate lots of tuna.
I guess you can say I’m mercurial.
Peace.
No, they are most likely alcohol thermometers. Generally considered much safer, and easier to read. If the fluid is blue or red (or any bright color) it’s not mercury.
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- I believe it was posted here that someone’s child once ate a quantity of pure mercury, and poison control said that it would pass through and out of their digestive system in a day or so, and do no detectable damage during the trip. If the child was taken to the hospital, they wouldn’t administer any treatment, except to give the same advice. Pure mercury is probably the least-reactive form of the element.
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- Also if I recall correctly, mercury left open does not “produce mercury vapor”, because the boiling temperature of mercury at atmospheric pressure is like 650 degrees F. There’s orange dust that does form of it, but I am too lazy to look up what that stuff is and don’t remember from chemistry class.
- Mercury in dental fillings is generally considered to be insignificant. And tuna collects lots of heavy metals.
- Also, keep in mind that electronic components contain dozens of substances that are serious or critical toxins to humans. If you ever have an electronic device blow/burn up on you, the blue cloud of vapor that gets produced is many times worse than a bit of liquid mercury in your hand.
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Bzzzzt - wrong. There is a substantial - and pretty hazardous - mercury vapour concentration being formed above left open mercury.
Doug and Dragon are of course both right. The vp of mercury is very low in absolute terms (0.26 Pa at RT or about 1/500,000 of an atmosphere for our non-metric cousins) http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/safework/cis/products/icsc/dtasht/_icsc00/icsc0056.htm . However, as mercury is so potentially toxic this represents 150 x the recomended max concentration http://www.minerals.csiro.au/safety/mercury.htm
make that 1/400,000 of an atmosphere
must preview, must preview
Which brings up the question, would you rather have a gallon of mercury, or a gallon of Mercury?
Mercury. I’d rather get the money.
Why does mercury have the same name as Mercury?
I broke a thermometer when I was a kid. I kept the resultant mercury in a tupperware tub, and played with it for days. I loved the way it shattered when poured, then reconstituted (now I’m realising where they got the idea for T2). I even used to roll it around on my tongue. Am I going to be adversely affected? Hatstand? Wibble wibble!
Not sure if I should be saying this, as it probably wasn’t the best choice of things to be done.
When I was in Junior High our chemistry teacher (who was an awsome guy) let the whole class play with mercury on a few occasions. Guess I’m one of the few people able to say that I held a pool of mercury in my hand and played with it. I personally love the stuff. I really really really wish it wasn’t toxic at all, I could have a lot of fun with it. Anyway, I haven’t noticed anything crazy going on (and I just turned 18… today actually, yipee!) None of my former class mates have gone insane or had anything else wrong with them that I know of. So where is the harm in handling it for a few hours? Did we all just get lucky or something?
Not necessarily. The phaseout of mercury thermomemeters started a while back but they were still available 5-10 yrs. ago. They are much rarer now, and you’re right about the colors.
Mercury (the planet) has named after the Roman god, the fleet-footed messenger with winged sandals, because of its high orbital speed around the sun. Mercury (the element) was probably named along a similar vein, as its nickname is quicksilver - I guess because it flows much quicker than silver (duh).
This is second-hand, because I wasn’t actually there to witness it, but it’s a funny story.
For my senior design project (I studied biomedical engineering) our group was working on a design and wanted to try using Nitinol (a nickle-titanium alloy that can change shape when transitioning from the martensite phase to the austensite phase. In short, it’s one of those “memory metals” that’s used in eyeglasses frames). By heat treating it you can adjust at what temperature it undergoes the transition.
From some very helpful suppliers, we had samples of Nitinol tubing donated to us, along with directions on how to heat treat it. The temperatures were do-able in a household oven, which is what my team chose to do. Not wanting to rely on the oven thermostat, they used a mercury thermometer. In the course of their work, they broke the thermometer. Being the conscientious engineering types, they called the Poison Control Center to find out what to do.
Essentially, their directions involved placing the spilled mercury, as well as the towels used to clean the spill up, into a leak-proof container. And then to place the container in the trash.
This still doesn’t sit quite well with me. I know it’s mercury ions, more so than the pure element, that’s more dangerous. But even if you have something in a leakproof container, as soon as Mr. Garbageman (or Ms. Garbagewoman) places the trash bag containing it into his/her truck, the next thing they do is compact things. Which could cause the container to break open.
But as I said, I wasn’t there.