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When I was young my Dad bought me some mercury home from work… I loved how it moved when I shook the bottle and the weight of it.
When I had my own kids I didn’t want it around, so our local council had set up a event where you could dispose of household liquids like old paints and solvents, so I took it down. When I drove up, the guy asked me what I was disposing of so I said mercury. It was bizarre. I was told to stay in the car and a guy came out of a shed in a full hazmat suit with one of those pairs of metal tongs to retrieve it from me.
I remember Dad telling me that miners used to collect gold pan tailings in mercury and then of a night they would hollow out a potato and put the mercury in, and then put that in the camp fire… it would burn off the mercury and leave a little ingot of gold.
Out in the edge of the lower mainland of BC by Hope, where there was a mini gold rush a long time ago you can find lots and lots of mercury sitting below the water levels when the streams dry out during the summer.
It is all left behind from the miners back in the day.
It’s actually harmless if not ingested. They were being weird.
Its also harmless, generally, when ingested as the gastrointestinal absorption of elemental mercury is negligible. It is inhalation that is most concerning with elemental mercury.
Except eating paint chips with lead made a lot of kids dumb. Lead based paint held up awesome, but it was banned due to injection. Not inhalation. Even now, 40+ years later it’s still the leading cause of lead poisoning in children.
I mean… we’re talking about mercury here, not lead.
Oh, fuck me. Lol. I commented last night and then responded back today and in between my mind totally flipped to thinking it was about lead.
We also had an innocent looking little (maybe 100ml or 200) bottle of mercury at school. Mostly for the startling weight when it was passed around to demonstrate density.
Nine out of ten hatters recommend that you don’t do this. The tenth hatter purple monkey dishwasher.
(Victorian-era hat makers were notorious for going mad because they used mercury to treat felt cloth.)
Is this the origin story of The Mad Hatter? 🙄
Could have been. I know Lewis Carroll liked to lampoon issues of the day in his writing.
I’m kind of guessing the mad as a hatter phenomenon was known then, but don’t really know.
I think the original idiom was “mad as a hatter” which was eventually shortened to “mad hatter”, possibly due to the Alice in Wonderland character.
I wonder what secondary compounds this was creating. Elemental mercury is pretty much fine, but if it was reacting with other things to create wacky fun times…
they chewed the leather to hides to soften them, IIRC. so it wasn’t just getting on their hands, they were ingesting it.
I think it was mercury nitrate. Much more soluble.
Sneaky Simpsons reference here for those who didn’t notice.
I thought it was the vapours from using mercury inside that got them.
It’s so much harder believing in six impossible things before breakfast when you’re allergic to quicksilver.
If anyone else was reminded of that video of a 110lb anvil floating in a tub of mercury, here you go. Don’t try this at home.
didn’t they use to use shitloads of mercury for floating the lenses on a lighthouse, letting it turn without too much in the way of friction?
Anyone who’s studied high school physics will also remember one of the biggest blunders of modern experimental physics: the Michelson-Morley Experiment which infamously attempted to prove the existence of the aether but rather gave them a pretty clear confirmation of a lack of the aether. It actually ended up helping form one of the basic tenets of Einstein’s Special Relativity, which is that the speed of light is constant within an inertial frame of reference.
They floated their interferometer setup on a sandstone slab measuring 1.5m x 1.5m x 0.3m in a giant circular trough of mercury in order to provide near-zero friction and reduce vibrations.
Not only is this technique still used to insulate large optical devices such as telescopes but liquid mercury is even spun around to create mirrors for telescopes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-mirror_telescope
That’s right, I often forget about that.
From the same issue:
Is, uhh… Is he floatin’ on a pool of mercury?
That he is. Looks like fun, right?
Honestly he looks a bit anxious
Pure mercury metal is pretty chill, just done fuck with organic mercury compounds
Vapours too.
Rip to that guy
Metallic murcury can’t actually be absorbed through the skin, and it can theoretically be handled without protective equipment if you know what you’re doing. Not that I would recommend it.
See the crazy stuff that Cody’s Lab does on YouTube, and he hasn’t gotten poisoned yet:
Mercury poisoning isn’t all or nothing. I love love love Cody but also that boy probably has a little mercury poisoning at this point ngl.
No he’s been tested and the test came back normal
Holy shit. I’m as surprised as I am happy! Thanks for letting me know.
My friends Dad showed us one time handling it in his hands, he said you just have to be absolutely certain you have no cuts or injuries that would let it get to your bloodstream. That was a long time ago now, today’s parents would probably freak.
Ooo I forgot about Cody. Gotta see if he is back to posting videos
He’s back and posting fairly regularly again, and better news is that he finally got paid by Google!
He just published a few videos, with more about the Chicken Hole Base
Mercury can absorb through the skin, but it takes a very long time. (Generally safe to touch it, but still wouldn’t recommend it)
If you have the stuff in your bare hands you also inhale the stuff…
You could just… not inhale liquids you’re holding in your hands. Probably a good idea even when it’s not mercury
/s
Try telling that to a 🐠
No hands, no problem.
Nah, it’s the vapor that’s dangerous with elemental mercury. Touching it is basically fine. Just no open wounds and be in a well ventilated area
There are far more toxic forms of mercury you shouldn’t mess with though
Is it more the inhalation than the skin absorption that would be toxic? Not too familar with mercury poisoning.
You’re correct
Is no one going to comment on the font rendering
I’ve played with mercury when I was a kid. Hopefully it doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass when I’m old.
Both my parents have told me playing with mercury like this was pretty common when they were kids. One’s still alive. 🤷🏻♂️
My aunt even drank some and nothing happened.
Metallic mercury should be fine. Not the fumes though.
It was commonly used as medicine for quite some time.
It didn’t work, but then nothing much did at the time.
It has such low bioavailability…
Photo: Robert W. Madden
Oh, he be Madden alright.
Dads old mercury filled carburetor sinch worked much better than the oil filled one ever did.
I hear it’s good for the French Disease.
Sure is hand outside today
I can’t read this. Reported.
Delicious as Sunny D.
Toxic as fuck.
Not as much
Depends on who you’re fucking.
