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I wouldn't smurf with that stuff, dude.

I played with a mercury ball years and years ago from  a broken thermometer.

Obligatory joke:
Q: what's the difference between an oral and rectal thermometer?
A: taste

You are quite the mad scientist...

Keep it away from anything aluminum you want to keep. Aluminum rusts like you would not believe when exposed to mercury.

If someone is interested in getting mercury, I have a link to some scientific website that will get you some... (Or at least I think they will.)

I don't want to post it here on MAF, but I will PM it or e-mail, so if you really want some mercury, contact me privately.

Where is SMITTY when you need a good response?

I dare you to drink it.

Zander wrote:

I dare you to drink it.

Shut your face... I realize that is a joke, but it is not very funny.

Anyway, I just think it's cool how it runs around the little bottle, and it's cool to own and whatever.

Whenever I am very old, I am going to get a whole bunch of mercury, and do stuff that nobody would even think about in their younger years.

Use it to clean hats.

During one of the maaaaany reflux experiments we did for A-level chemistry, after paying close attention to the speech from the teacher about how we would not be using namby-pamby "lower school" thermometers, but expensive mercury-containing ones, I managed to break ours. (Actually I believe it to have been defective in the first place - the bulb quite literally came away from the glass.)

Anyway, the apparatus was boiling its bollocks off and I was keeping a 'close eye' on the temperature, when it suddenly appeared to fall to beyond where I could read it. This failed to trigger any alarm bells in my head, and I elected to continue the experiment. It was only when a horrendous vapour was released and hung heavily in the air around my workstation, I considered that all might not be well, and so I called upon the expert advice of my teacher.

Her words were, and I quote: "Christ's alive! You've broken the thermometer! Look there's mercury in the bottom of your boiling tube, you blundering oaf..." (indeed there was) - she continued: "Jesus, this vapour can't be doing us any good (no smurf, sherlock) - everybody GET OUT. NOW!!"

I am not certain what temperatures are required to create a vapour of mercury, but even if I did, due to the defective thermometer, I don't know at what temperature my apparatus was prior to the mercury being, err, erroneously released. However, the entire class was exposed to my possibly mercury-containing fumes, and (so far as I know) all are alive and well today - some six years later. Being a somewhat rash and lazy scientist, I have nevertheless concluded from this exhaustive investigation, that inhalation (or ingestion) of mercury in any reasonable concentration is harmless.

Sadly aforementioned teacher refused to allow us to harvest the small amount of remaining mercury from the base of the tube, instead she called us collectively "helpless imbeciles" and asked us to leave

I no longer undertake my own experiments.

tF

omg hot bunsen!

C. Ives wrote:

Considering the boiling point of mercury is 356.73 °C (674.11 °F), I doubt it was mercury vapors.

Actually, that's wrong.  Mercury has a very low vapor pressure, which means that you don't have to boil it to get it in the air.  That's what makes the liquid so dangerous.  Being around unsealed mercury means you're inhaling the vapors, so even if you're not actively ingesting it, you're taking it into your body.

That said, Mercury is even more fun when you're handling it.  As I mentioned, my friend from Hong Kong got to play with it all the time. They'd put it in their hands and poke it; liquid metal is really strange.

It was funny because when she got here and we all pointed out that it's kind of, well, toxic, she got all freaked out.  Apparently that's not part of their curriculum in HK.