What liquid has the highest density at room teperature and pressure? I’m thinking mercury, but I’d like to know if anyone knws of any heavier.
What about under higher pressures, or higher or lower temperatures?
Mercury is about the densest liquid (13.59 g/cm[sup]3[/sup]) under normal T and P.
Put things under pressure, and you’ll end up with neutronium at 10[sup]14[/sup] to 10[sup]15[/sup] g/cm[sup]3[/sup]. Still more pressure, and you might get a quark soup that’s 3 to 10 times denser yet.
I think Mercury is about as dense as you’d get as far as elements. From the discussion about Mercury on the Dope some time ago, apparently a Gallon of Mercury weighs in the ballpark of 80-100 pounds! :eek:
Mercury is cool stuff…
One of my favorite mercury facts is that the ancients used to ingest it as a laxative!
Raise the temperature and you’ll have:
at 328 degrees C - molten lead (11.3 g/cc)
at 1064 degrees C - molten gold (19.3 g/cc)
at 3045 degrees C - molten osmium (22.4 g/cc)
Incubus
Actually a gallon of Mercury weighs about 163 pounds !!!
I was going to ask this same question the other day. I was wondering, what’s the densest liquid on the planet earth? Then I modified that idea a bit. It seems to me that water is more dense in some areas of the world than in others. For example, I would think the water in the Great Salt Lake is more dense than the water of Lake Michigan. Is that true?
[/slight hijack]
The water isn’t more dense in itself, the combination of the water and salt is more dense.
That’s true, but the water in the Great Salt Lake isn’t just water. It’s water with a lot of solutes. Not that Lake michigan water is exactly pure.
Isn’t glass (good old silicon dioxide) a liquid at standard pressure/temp?
(yes, this is going to devolve into “what is the difference between a liquid and a solid”)
Mercury is denser than glass anyway, so let’s not go there…
Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! Not a glss flw thread, please!
In any case it is far less dense than mercury.
Imperial or US? 
Horror strikes in the chem lab. <snicker>
Threads like this are what I like the most about the SDMB. Carry on.
[Ah-nuld]It’s liquid me-tuhl[Ah-nuld]
Not just the ancients – “Blue Mass”, dispensed as a laxative during the American Civil War, contained an wful lot of metallic mercury.
If you’re looking for other dense liquids, look in a mineralogy text on liquids for determining densities of minerals. There are some surprisingly dense solutions out there. (although nowhere near mercury’s, of course)
Depends; is it a European or African swallow carrying the bucket of mercury?
How would a one-ounce swallow carry a 100-pound bucket of mercury?
It is a US Gallon.
An African swallow could do it.
And please folks, it weighs 163 pounds.
Alternate question, what is the densest safe liquid to handle. As in, not mercury.