MERCURY vs SALT - Defies ALL LOGIC 

The crystalline structure of the salt is basically locking the salt together with the weight of the mercury pressing down.

Once the salt gets on top, it stays there. The reason the salt does not rise is due to an extremely high surface tension. The mercury atoms do not want to let go of each other and this creates a kind of barrier to the salt, which, unless it is inside the enclosed area of mercury, the salt's buoyancy will have no effect.

I love how you protected the identity of the little girl on the salt container. couldn't make out which brand it was.

Other elements: Why cant you just be normal? Mercury: *screams in liquid*

I couldn't sleep last night was wondering how mercury and salt react together, thanks for clearing that up, I can rest now

surface tension: mercury's highly cohesive, tends to cluster together, and the clusters can't slip through the grains of salt.

You're forgetting about the surface tension of the mercury vs the space between the salt grains. It makes perfect sense. If you had salt grains that were larger they would come to the top immediately.

Ya., we did this in school., the weight of the mercury on top of the salt causes the salt crystals to compress.. the more mercury the tighter the salt compresses eliminating sufficient voids to alow the mecury to flow down causing it to be suspended.

The weight of the mercury pins the salt against the sides/bottom of the glass (preventing it from sliding up the sides of the glass) and the salt is trying to float but doesn't have enough buoyancy force to counteract the surface tension and float upwards thus the salt stays pinned in its position.

Simple. The surface tension is enough to prevent the salt granules from passing through the Mercury

Yup, I've always wanted to mix table salt with mercury. Now that I know, I can sleep soundly. Thank you!

"High consumption of salt is unhealthy" lmao just watch me

Not surprised at all! The salt granules cause a lot of friction.

"warning: high consumption of salt is unhealthy" of all the warnings XD

The surface tension is holding the mercury together and the weight is compacting the salt down.

"I make videos about mercury, so you don't have to.. mess with the stuff" - niiiiice!

This is pretty simple. There is just nowhere for the mercury to go! You are expecting the mercury to flow to the bottom of the salt but the tiny gaps between salt crystals is too small for something with as much surface tension as mercury to squeeze through. The salt will not rise through the mercury either because the surface tension prevents it from doing so. It can only rise by going around the outside of the mercury puddle, which it cannot do because the mercury is pressed against the glass, sealing the salt in underneath. Ergo, the only way to get the salt out from underneath the mercury is to manually agitate it.

Pour the Mercury on the ground. The soil granules are less dense than the Mercury, but that doesn't mean the Mercury will sink down into the center of the earth. The salt was compacted together and acted as a single solid more sense than the Mercury.

- Can I have some Mercury to go? - Do you want more salt on it? - Sure!

I'm curious as to how you separated the salt from the mercury when it was time to put it back in the bottle.

1:03 I'm real glad you told me the high consumption of salt was unhealthy. I was planning on eating a bucket of salt after this

By adding the mercury slowly, you are adding pressure to the top of the salt, and that force is causing the grains to interlock with greater and greater force. In order to dislodge a salt crystal it has to be knocked loose from its partners but it can't. Like holding a handful of sand by crushing it in your fingers, while you squeeze hard, the sand becomes more solid. ...i.e. non-newtonian fluid...

"Warning: high consumption of salt is unhealthy" Yeah, THAT'S what you should be worried about....

3 minutes of farting noises.

LOL "Warning: High consumption of salt is unhealthy" 20 seconds later... "Oh, and mercury is pretty bad for you too."

Mercury's high surface tension won't allow it to flow though the tightly-packed salt grains. I'm guessing if you reverse this and pour the salt into mercury, the salt will just stay on top.

Well that’s very interesting I never would’ve thought that it would’ve done that with the salt

the surface tension of the mercury precludes the salt being able to get above it. mercury is fun to play with, isn't it, my physics teacher (who was also my swimming teacher) used to have a bottle of it that he would pass around the class......

This isn't confusing or mysterious. The surface tension of the mercury prevents it from flowing through the gaps between salt crystals. You're suggesting the salt should "float up", but there is no force pushing the salt upwards any higher than the height it piles up to under standard air pressure. In fact, the mercury pushes *down* on the salt, so you'd actually expect the salt to be compressed *more*. :) (I'm not a physicist, but I am an engineer. So take what I say with a drop of mercury.)

its because you poured the mercury into the salt if you would have done it the other way around the salt would float right away

imagine walking along a sandy beach and suddenly you step into a giant vat of mercury hidden under a layer of sand

You should try adding a little pepper.😄😄😄

I'm guessing that if you put the mercury in first,the salt would remain on top.

Ez, the salt should float by all means, but it can't break the surface tension of the mercury, that's why it only rises until it's agitated.

thanks for adding the dubstep background music, it's really great

Came down to comment 'surface tension,' found out I was four years and several hundred (or thousand?) comments too late.

anyone know what brand of salt he used? I couldnt tell with the tape blocking the name :'(

Well mercury has an enormous surface tension compared to other liquids, so it probably has a hard time penetrating the gaps between the salt. All the salt must be held down by the surface skin of the bottom of the mercury which just sits on top then I suppose.

i honestly thought i was about to watch a cody'slab video and then the intro started

It took me 4.5 hours to get here, but I am finally here...

I'd be more impressed if he poured the salt on top of the Mercury, LAME

Any chance we could talk you into doing it again except this time add the salt to a glass of mercury instead of mercury to the glass of salt?

It would be curious to see how a different shaped vessel would do, something big and even all the way down would be interesting to compare

Well that went exactly as I would have expected it to.

Mercury has HUGE surface tension, so does not 'wet' the salt....

who else come to read comments instead of showing this to teachers why the fuck this happens?

Woulda been interesting if you had used vibration to see if the salt rises to the top; in the same way a large volume of concrete is vibrated to remove the air from the settling concrete.

Where do you put all of this when you're done with it ??

It's cuz the salt is soo compact. The Mercury is soo thick it can seep through the grains of salt. Isn't that obvious though? Why would you compare the density of a liquid to a solid?

i am a collage science professor and what is happening is the salt is compacting tightly not allowing room for the mercury to work its way to the bottom and that is why it took a lot of agitation to get some above

How did you dispose of this?

So how to extract the salt, sprinkle it on your spaghetti and not get mercury poisoning?

It's due to surface tension. The surface tension of Mercury is strong enough to hold itself together atop the tightly packed grains of salt. You did this test ass backward.

mercury vs salt: what do YOU prefer on fries?

"Hey, has anyone seen my favorite lager glass?"

It's not defying logic, in fact it's displaying simple logic. The mercury compacts the salt into a solid platform. Kinda like sand.

The weight of the mercury causes the salt granules to interlock and stay in place. Nothing amazing about it.

***** Science teacher here. The tendency for a partical to be excluded from a liquid is (Cohesion of liquid- adhesion of liquid to partical)/partical size. So since mercury has a high cohesion and a low adhesion to salt, the small salt granules create a lot of surface tension exclusion force.

What about each of them possessing weak diamagnetic fields. That resist one another? Just guessing here. Or are they both paramagnetic? Thanks for sharing. Peace.

Could the shape of the glass cause this reaction ?

I went to Mercury once, people down there are so salty

The pressure that mercury applies on the salt causes it to sit at the bottom

Please do a salt sulfur and mercury mix . Try to head it i need the results for someting

I'm 15 and it took me 3 seconds to figure out the surface tension of the mercury is enough to keep it from dispersing down into the salt...

Does anyone know what brand of salt he's using?

surface tension is the answer I think.

Wait, I'm confused. There's tape over the brand name on the salt container, how do I know what brand it is?

I didn’t know playing with mercury was part of your RU-vid career. It explains the friendship with OG.

I have no idea what brand of salt he is using.

it's due to grain packing, the salt used is granular and the weight of the Mercury hard packs it, the Mercury then can't flow past the packed salt to lift it up simple really.

Finally I can sleep without constant wonder!

Im curious with how you extract the mercury from the salt after the experiment?

Now i can sleep...

I'm a 14 year old boy who loves science! Here is what I think is happening. Although the densities of the 2 different substances are stupendously far apart the mercury still floats. The reason I think it is, is because mercury is very dense because of the large molecular mass and molecules are tightly packed, if you but mercury into water the mercury will submerge because water and mercury are both fluids, that means they both flow. But if you have grains of small salt particles then the mercury cannot separate it's self because of the tension, so it does not allow salt to get past and over or mercury to get under the salt. So the reason it did not let the individual grains of salt go to the top is because again salt and mercury repel against each other and mercury did not allow it to break its tension. But you could see the mercury was able to push the salt upwards from sides but did not let grain float to the surface. This means that what also affected this phenomenon is the fact that the cup was cylinder and salt was at the bottom from the beginning and it did not allow the mercury to work down. If the salt was liquid the mercury just submerge, if the salt was a ball the mercury again will take its place and make the ball of salt float. So its the close solid particles that did not allow mercury to break the high force of attraction and lower it's atoms down ward in small parts. In conclusion it was just where the positions started and the state of mater it was in and spaces between the bonds of the solid that did not allow the mercury to flow or break its force of attraction.

Thank God for this, after my sleepless nights of wonder!

“It didn’t blowed up or turn into slime”

The salt crystals are packed together inside that glass they are creating a surface for the mercury to sit on top of.

Warning : High consumption of Mercury is unhealthy.

Try adding salt to the Mercury and change your container

The salt is being compressed which prevents it from moving, due to the mass of the Mercury....

The buoyancy of the salt doesn't have enough force to overcome the downward pressure of the mercury. Kind of like if a fat girl sat on your face, why don't you float to the top? Because you can't.

Defies logic ? not at all.

that effect happens when you put something against the side when submerged in a fluid with high surface tension.. the surface tension tries to pull a vacuum as it does not stick to the glass and thus the suction keeps it down and stuck to the side

I'm no science major but I was always taught that salt's cube structure was very strong so you could actually be seeing the surface tension of the salt standing up to the weight of the mercury

Trying pouring the salt in after the mercury. I bet it doesn't just sink to the bottom.

did you just assume my science teachers gender?

does the container help in holding the salt down?

Don't know about surface tension, but there's tension in the room now having to sit through this waiting on something spectacular happening.

"High surface tension...or whatever..." Very scientific indeed. 🤔

I may try lead birdshot next. That may be a logical next step.

Just with salt or anything granular? Does the same thing happen with table sugar? Dry sand?

I was curious to see you pour that solution into a strainer. I also imagined you pouring the salt onto the mercury itself. Just for fun. #ThankYouForThisVideo 😊

there's more salt in this comment section than there is in the video.

Try pouring the mercury in the glass first and then the salt will float, it doesn't float this way around because the weight of the mercury is compressing the salt.

One question I used to be very thin. But one night back in 2016 - I cooked lamb chops for the first time and ate all by myself and became so fat and difficult to go back way it was. I had a sore throat few days ago but recovered using salt water due to its density in the throat. I know lamb meats contains zinc. But if zinc mixes with salt water - will salt water have more dense? If I drink salt water, will fat go away because of zinc inside me?

What do you do with such mixtures of Mercury after the video? Where do you dump it?

good job at covering up that salt label, i couldn't even read it.

This defies absoloutly no logic. In fact, it makes a LOT of sense

The surface tension of mercury is so high that it cannot flow between the salt grains to the bottom.

The mercury packed the salt so tightly that the salt acted like a solid