Hg is an accumulative poison, and requires years of exposure to result in madness... hatmakers use to work with salts of Hg and do 8rs shifts 5 days a week for decades. very different from a few minutes exposure at school or college.
In fact, Mercury has the Hg symbol because in Greek it's called Hydrargyrus (Υδράργυρος), which means "liquid silver". The 'Mercury' name comes from the alchemists' symbolization of this element with the planet Mercury.
That's interesting, as the symbol (chemical symbol) of mercury was named after something in Greek I believe, very similar to what you're talking about, I can't currently remember though.
It's a shame they didn't mention the alternative name for Mercury, which is 'Quicksilver'. It was so called because in earlier times, 'quick' in English meant 'living' (see the Apostle's Creed: 'Thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead'). So 'quicksilver' actually means 'living silver', a reference to its mobility as a metal.
Talking about people stealing it, my grandad told me about a similar event where he worked. Mercury was often used in chemical processes and there were cases of some of it being stolen. One guy who cycled to and from work had been hiding some inside his bike frame, and he was only discovered when one day he was trying to cycle out of the gate and his bike fell over and he couldn't pick it back up!
The mercury exposure to hat makers involved a process called "carrotting" - treating fibers with mercury and nitric acid (it's an orange solution, hence the name).
Waste metallic Mercury is reacted with sulfur to produce HgS, similar to the naturally occuring mineral Cinnabar, which is insoluble in water. The HgS is then permanently stored in landfills for inorganic hazardous waste.
I've tasted mercury! Really nice flavor actually, sweet like butterscotch. I of course did a ritualistic cleansing of the mouth with water afterward, I say ritualistic because it's a heavy metal and any absorption that would have happened, happened instantly so besides letting it roll off my tongue back into the beaker, not much more I could have done for safety besides not taste it - but think of the glory! When people ask "what it tastes like" and you're the only one batshit enough to have a go at it.
Mergury isn't absorbed in the digestive tract and passes through relatively intact. The danger is mercury vapo(u)r which readily absorbs in the lungs and then the bloodstream.
I am not a chemistry major, no. I am an Atmospheric Science Major. Physics is more important to me. That is beyond the point. I love these videos so much, and the more I watch the more I get enthralled with the series you guys have put together. Thank you for taking the time to do this, and well, thank you.
When I taught high school chemistry in Neptune Beach, Florida, I discovered several boxed up barometers in the back of the storeroom. The mercury was stored in separate vials. I was able to get a hazmat team from the school district to come and dispose of the barometers.
I was thinking about cinnabar the other day wondering exactly what it was. I was recalling my Meso-America Anthropology professor discussing Mayan cultures' fascination with cinnabar. She mention cinnabar so much in pictorials and hieroglyphics always made me think it was bar of yummy cinnamon white chocolate.
I've 1L of mercury. well, my grandfather uses mercury in his workshop. He is a goldsmith. Use it to absorb the tiny particles of gold and then leverage to do other pieces of jewelry. He gave me 4 ml of mercury, to play a bit. :D
Traditional top hats were made of felt that was formed from animal furs. Expensive hats were made from beaver fur, which has hairs that readily interlock and form a strong water-resistant felt. Cheaper hats were made from things like rabbit fur, which had to be specially treated with mercurous nitrate in order to form a felt. A later acid treatment would leave behind traces of elemental mercury, which would then be evaporated during the finishing and forming process.
But, why was the janitor stealing Mercury? I can't really think of any other reasons but that he might sell it, or try to poison someone with it.. Apparently, the risk wasn't worth his job.
Maybe to extract gold. That's at least what they did in some places I heard of with the mercury from medical equipment (leaving the doctors with broken tools...)
The home in which I grew up as a teenager had a mercury switch in the thermostat controlling its central air conditioner. This switch had a small mass of mercury in a closed glass bulb, with various wires stuck into it to form various circuits. I loved toying with it to watch the peculiar way the mercury moved, and was just savvy enough to quietly shut off the air conditioning for the few moments I'd be dickering around with the thermostat switch.
jvobike * Pressing 7, 8 and 9 to make funny rhythms * Hardens- Hardens- Hardens- His bucket-Dingdong Hard-Hard-Ha-Ha-Hardens-Dingdong-Hard-Hard-Ha-Ha-Hardens-Dingdong xD
The mad hatter reference is correct. I saw on a documentary where the hatters would use a brush and paint the brim of a hat to make it hold a stiff edge. As the brush bristles stiffened, the hatters would commonly moisten them with saliva by touching them with their tounge - not the best idea in hindsight. Thanks for all the great videos.
The crust is very easy to explain, since a metal like soldering tin, is not liquid at room temperature. The matte layer means the outer part (wich cools the quickest) is becoming solid . If you heat it up, the layer dissapears since it becomes liquid again. So it is just the metal returning to its solid form.
@Numboss if it is warm enough and you give it enough time, yes. I had a formula to calculate that time somewhere, but i my files are a mess, need to sort them again. But if i remember it correctly, A drop of 3mm diameter, takes about 2-5 hours at room temperature. Of course it is depending on air pressure and whatnot. But just as a rough guideline.
Mercury(ii) nitrate was use to manufacture felt. This was known as "carroting" because aside from being highly caustic and highly poisonous, it turned everything a bright orange color, including an unfortunate feltmaker's or hatter's fingers. Animal pelts were soaked or brushed with a solution of HgN2O6. Owing to the caustic nature this caused the fur to fall out. It also loosened the microscopic scales on the cuticle layer of the hairs, making them "rougher" and more easily made into felt.
Caesium Is not a liquid at STP (Stand for : Standard temperature (298.15 Kelvin) and pressure (101325 Pascal)). It melt lower than gallium (Gallium melt at 29.7646 'C ) but higher than STP (Caesium melt at 28.5 'C) so it is a solid at STP.
In times past, a mercury solution was commonly used in the felting process. Mercury nitrate was used in processing the animal hair that is used in making felt. It caused the fibers of the fur to separate from the pelt and to mat together more readily. This is called "carroting"'
all substances change volume with temperature, as per the Kinetic Molecular Theory (KMT). The main difference being how much the volume changes, being compressible is another matter, as that is determined by pressure. Water is somewhat of a special case, because of the hydrogen bonds between the molecules it is much denser then would be expected, and so it does not compress readily, it is also one of the few substances less dense as a solid then as a liquid.
mercury isnt as dangerous as people make it seem. a lot of adults nowadays played with mercury when they were kids. the reason the hatters went mad is because they were breathing in the vapors all day for long periods of time
Absolutely. Mercury is 30 times the weight than water. A single gallon of water is around 8 lbs, while a gallon of mercury would be about 240 lbs. It's so dense that other metals actually float in it with the exception of gold, in which mercury will actually adhere to it.
Elemental mercury isn't toxic to swallow (in small amounts!) because it can't adhere to the mucus lining of the gut, and it just comes out the other end. Organic forms of mercury are toxic because they can be absorbed easily, such as the contaminated fish in Minimoto. Hatters used to stiffen hat brims with mercury vapour, which the lungs can absorb, and this would cause them to slowly go mad. The phrase 'mad as a hatter' was based on this, and then Lewis Carroll used this to create a character
Like Pete says, it is beautiful. Really interesting how the mercury sticks to itself. I wonder if that has to do with valence electrons. Or, maybe a different sort of macro-property
In this video, the Professor discusses the Minamata Bay contamination by the Chisso corporation. Even into the early 2000s, survivors still were not fully compensated by being acknowledged.
Interesting fact about mercury that he left out.Around the Year 1000 in Cairo and Baghdad they had huge (and i mean HUGE. Like 50 feet in diameter) mercury pools because of the awesome look of it. And there is an awesome mercury fountain made by Alexander Calder thats still working. Of course, it is sealed away airtight. Also, the fumes are more dangerous than the mercury in its liquid form. You can touch it, it won't do harm to you. You can actually even swallow it, breathing fumes is worse.
Professor Poliakoff mentioned he did not entirely understand how mercury was involved in hat making. It was used in the form of Mercury(II) nitrate (mercuric nitrate if you want to be a bit more pedestrian) as part of the treatment process of beaver skins (whose fur was used to make felt for the hats), which were dried in ovens. The fumes from the drying process (and residue in the fur) would apparently cause widespread mercury poisoning among hatters.
It wasn't mercury itself, as he's suggesting, but mercury salt, that they used to make felt for hats, day after day handling the material, would make the hat makers crazy! Those exposed developed uncontrollable twitches and trembles, making them appear demented by everyone!
It is supposed to be so dense that it wont stick to your finger. Watch as he pours the mercury it doesn't "wet" the walls of the beaker. Its cohesion between molecules is so strong that if he pours it out none will be sticking to the glass as water for example....
The mercury was used to clean furs before felting. The furs were submerged in mercury, all of the dirt, bugs, loose hairs, etc, floated to the top, and the fur came out perfectly clean and dry.
Read a study not but about a couple years ago which found that over 50% of the major food products that contained High Fructose Corn Syrup as the #1 or #2 ingredient also contained mercury as well. Something about the processing of it I think, though I can't recall. Washington post article if memory serves me correctly. University of Calgary has an interesting video on RU-vid about the effects of mercury on the human brain tissue.
@CharlesStudios thank you very much but its a bit out of my price range so if anyone knows of someplace cheaper then $32 per 2 grams please let me know and thank you Charlesstudios for that information
Because the properties of mercury by itself are different than its properties when amalgamated with something else. When you have mercury by itself it's just mercury, and that can hurt you. But when you have it in an alloy with silver, then you have mercury-silver not just Hg by itself, so it's not free to cause the damage it would otherwise.
Actually, it used to be prescribed by doctors. It is safer to drink it than breath is (the atom is large, and has trouble penetrating the abdominal wall), while lungs are more penetrable.
@Jackfirecracker It used to be quite expensive, as it has a lot of industrial uses. You likely have mercury in you house, in the thermostat that controls you heating and air conditioning. A little sealed glass vial containing Mercury is connected to a bimetal coil, as the coil moves with temperature changes, the blob of mercury makes or breaks an electrical contact, turning the heater on or off.
Mercury was used in hat making to “agglomerate” the rabbit or hare fur that was used for the felt in the production of the hat. After treatment, the felt was dried in an oven which then of course released Mercury vapour which was then breathed in by the workers and the resulting damage to health. Hence the term “Mad as a Hatter”.
These adults were all terminal. This means, that they all died. This was an Ely Lilly study in the 20's you are and everyone is referring to. There was no longitudinal affects, meaning impossible to find out the affects when they all died within weeks of each other.
IIRC elemental mercury in itself is not the major problem, it's the oxides and halides it creates that are the issue. I still have some mercuric chloride in a WELL-HIDDEN place in my house- never know when I'll need it (used it once some years ago in an extreme case of disinfection)...
Page 456 In that year he heated a chemical---red mercuric oxide---and in doing so produced an "air" that differed in many ways from ordinary air. Page 455 Born near Leeds, England, on March 13, 1733, Priestley was one of six children.
@SuperNoteBlocks storys like that have been told for ages at every place that handles higher amounts of mercury. At the BASF in Germany, they tell a story about somebody smuggling it out there in the frame of his bike, until his bike fell over, and he couldn't lift it back onto its wheels. I honestly don't believe any of those stories, even tho they sound like something that really could have happened.
mercury was used in the gold rush days, they would pour it at the top of the mountain and it runs down and forms gold-mercury malgum which you can still find today when u pan/sluice for gold. the u just burn off the mercury in a secluded place and you have a gold button!!
I'm like 95% sure This video played during one of my dreams. I dreamt that I was at the warehouse in Warehouse 13, and Pete was talking about mercury, and he mentioned the HG Wells thing, which was weird, because HG Wells is in the show.
Mercury salts were used for tanning the leather--chemically transforming it from the fatty and hairy hides of animals into a durable material with some water resistance, great flexibiltiy and appealing look.
There is a substitute metal that is liquid like mercury but non-toxic. It's called galistan, it is an alloy of gallium indium and tin. But it is very expensive.
