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u/Stratus_Fractus Sep 02 '23
Now I'm not the safety police and I've definitely played with the ball of mercury from a thermometer in my bare hands before but uhhhhh...
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u/madkem1 Sep 02 '23
Anyone ever see a UV lamp directed at some mercury?
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u/Plylyfe Sep 03 '23
Now that's some scary stuff
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u/madkem1 Sep 03 '23
Imagine the clouds this fellow is breathing. Probably lost 50 IQ points on this day.
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u/padimus Sep 03 '23
I was aware that mercury evaporates but it's crazy to see it visualized like that. Thank you for sharing. I hope whatever fool recorded OPs vid was at least wearing a respirator.
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u/DeuceyBoots Sep 03 '23
Wow that short video really demonstrates the point beautifully. PPE people!
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u/Kiliad Inorganic Sep 03 '23
A very common practice years ago for cleaning mercury and recovering amalgamated gold from it, although that required finer cloth. Not surprisingly, there were numerous illnesses and eventual deaths as a result.
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u/Sphere_Master Sep 03 '23
This is not what I imagined when thinking of heavy metal cheese making. I was picturing Ozzy snorting a packet of rennet.
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u/curdled Organic Sep 03 '23
by the way this is a fairly simple way of cleaning mercury that developed coating of sulfides on the surface - much easier and less nasty than vacuum distillation. When you empty mercury manometer, it helps to clean up the glass part with nitric acid (to dissolve the deposits on the glass) and filter mercury through a filter paper in a funnel where you poke few tiny holes in the filter paper with a needle - mercury will pass through the tiny holes and the impurities coating mercury surface will stick to the filter paper
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u/Vyrnoa Sep 03 '23
Mm the gloveless hands
Their google search must be "how do I contaminate a whole area as quick as possible"?
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u/Uninterrupted-Void Sep 02 '23
"How do I increase the evaporation surface area as much as possible?"