At least that’s what I think it is --Liquid silvery stuff, way too heavy for its size to be any normal water based thing.
I’m still dealing with stuff left in my parent’s house, and that was one of the recent finds, a nice little glass jar of this stuff, roughly a quarter cup in volume. In one of the cubby holes in his workshop.
I just wonder why he would have had it? Because my dad was an engineer, and did all sorts of DIY repair jobs, plus had a bunch of hobbies like electronics (He built his own computer before the Altair kits existed, for example) and so he had tons of tools and, er, mysterious (to me) electronic stuff and various supplies waiting for projects when he had the time to get to them … then he died suddenly, rather young.
Anyway, he wasn’t a junk collector or hoarder (that was my Mom) or anything. If he owned something it was because he was planning a project that required it… but what the heck can you use mercury for?
Any guesses?
(In case anyone worries: I realize it has to be disposed of responsibly. There’s a town hazardous waste collection day a couple times of year, I’ll take it to that.)
Back when I was a kid, before Mercury was dangerous, we used to break thermometers and play with the little silver ball. Put it in a jar and shake it up, then watch it join together into a big ball again. Could it be a left over from something like that?
Or maybe he salvaged it from some old equipment, and hadn’t properly disposed of it yet?
Was your dad a hobby gold miner? Mercury is useful for separating flour gold from black sand and other fines left over from panning (professional and hard rock miners use a more sophisticated process). The mercury is mixed with the gold-sand-etc ore, the gold bonds with the mercury to form amalgam which is then heated until the mercury evaporated, leaving behind a blob of more-or-less pure gold.
And ditto on the advice to sell it rather than dispose.
Mercury and gold form an amalgam. The mixture can be used to plate metal, and then the mercury driven off by heating. This was the technique used for the Death Clocks I mentioned. The guys who made them died young from too much exposure to mercury.
Liquid mercury is not harmless, but it’s not particularly dangerous either. Mercury in vapor form (as you might be exposed to in a broken fluorescent lamp) and mercury compounds, particularly dimethylmercury, are quite a bit more dangerous – hundreds of times. Eating a lot of tuna fish is also probably worse as far as mercury exposure goes.
Mercury was commonly used in high current switches where a simple brass contact would wear out fast. A company I worked for made a hand dryer operated by a foot pedal mercury switch. I am sure that in the early part of the 20th century, they were pretty common.
Interesting. Mercury is one of those substances that you are repeatedly told is so dangerous that you must must must wear gloves when handling it lest vaguely described but apparently horrible medical issues ensure. What sort of risks does skin contact with mercury actually pose? Is it mostly a problem of mercury potentially entering the body through open wounds or body cavities, or does it literally hurt you just by touching your skin?
OldGuy ain’t kidding! Dimethylmercury is really scary stuff. Karen Wetterhahn was exposed THROUGH LATEX GLOVES to only a few drops of the stuff and died within a year. Dimethylmercury is NOT for playing with…
The first thing I’d want to do is get another container - preferably something nonporous, like a larger glass jar, but something - and put the jar of mercury in it. Wear gloves when you do so, and seal the larger container tightly. Dispose of the gloves, do not reuse them.
Then, yeah, look into selling it. But don’t, under any circumstances, risk any of that stuff getting out. It’s a neurotoxin and even the straight liquid kind is bad news.
Also, at least one layer of the outer armor needs to be shatterproof. And then I’d stick that sealed container outside the habitable space of your home - the garage, a shed, somewhere with lots of air flow and not a confined space. Just because the risks are a little exaggerated - evacuating the room when you spill the tiny spec in a cfl bulb - doesn’t mean you should take any chances with a jar filled with it. Yes, the right form can kill you rapidly with only slight exposure.
I’m sorry but mercury paranoia is a bit overplayed. As a kid I played with the stuff barehanded on several occasions. We pushed it around with or fingers dividing the stuff into little blobs. We also coated pennies with it to make them look like dimes – not that you could spend them or anything, it wouldn’t stay too long. I don’t think metallic mercury can get through the skin very easily. Dimethylmercury definitely can.
As a child I had a five pound bottle of mercury that I played with in all sorts of ways until it was all gone. I even heated it and mixed it with solder to make silvery stuff like toothpaste. The safety standards I hear today suggest to me that there is no way I should have survived all this, but I did.
I remember coating silver coins with mercury. Of course, that was before the sandwich coins came out. And it was used in electric relays. And in non-electronic thermostats
Mercury paranoia is SUCH a crock! It’s not dangerous unless you vaporize it (like in the ecologically correct compact fluorescent bulbs) and breathe it or eat it. In high school we had a pint jar of mercury the chemistry teacher would get out and we would play with a few time a year. I’ve dipped my fingers in mercury; an interesting feeling - sorta like molasses or thick oil but it doesn’t cling to you. It’s a molten metal that doesn’t dissipate AT ALL at anywhere near room temperature. It wants to remain in one blob. If the glass jar and lid are intact just leave it alone and have a cool curiosity!
Mercury CAN’T vaporize, escape, or eat though its container.