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Mercury: The Liquid Metal

Added Sep 12, 2014 •

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See how some items float in this liquid!

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hello everyone this is Jeff tell fledermaus I got a lot of questions on my other Mercury videos whether it be possible to walk on the surface of Mercury in this case not the planet but the element mercury seems to be Nature's joke on the side just the only metal that is liquid at ordinary room temperature it's still outweighs most solid ones including lead volume for volume all the substances you may encounter in your everyday life only a few such as platinum gold tungsten and iridium are heavier than Mercury although it runs like water and Exhibits a surface tension it does not wet any object that it comes in contact with now I would call Mercury obsolete element in a past Mercury was used pretty extensively for most commonly thermometers but also manometers barometers no manometers blue screwed that one up but also Mercury switches mercury relays but because Mercury is a hazardous nasty toxic material it's been replaced by non-hazardous things mostly like chronic devices solid state relays and pressure transducers in like how people always ask me where I get my free from I bought a lot of it up eBay about 15 years ago buying broken Mercury contactors but seriously sitter the toxicity and everything in do you really want to have something like that around your house  now before we start discussing whether we can walk on this very dense metal mercury is almost 14 times denser than water and we're going to take a look at some that will float in Mercury now this 50 BMG bullet weighs 1.6 Oz or 45 G and floats on Mercury like it was made out of balsa wood and we can see what's going on little better in slow-mo and you'll notice that the Mercury does kind of repels off the surface of the bullet doesn't wet it at all I hear was taking a little bit of water and put it on the surface of the Mercury and we your finger in and it takes a little bit of effort it feels kind of strange and I would say the best way to describe is like sticking your finger in a bowl of Jell-O of course golf ball normally sinks in water but to submerge it in Mercury it takes a lot of force and Evans so absolute Bazaar feeling a Tick's probably about at least five pounds of force to push it down and submerge it and that was just a really weird sensation skip a fight put it on there and we drop the golf ball into the Mercury it a little splash and Bob's around like a ping pong ball with Bob around on on water very very buoyant  next will take very heavy solid steel ball-bearing this weighs over 7 oz or about 200 g for the rest of the world and please 50% of its surface is still above the surface of the Mercury and it does take a little less effort to submerge it what's the golf ball let's steal it kind of defies your senses when you when you try to submerge it next will put a very large socket in the Mercury while it's pretty large and will try to stand it up on on the surface of it and it really just kind of balance itself and is partially submerged just like the ball bearing  in other words the socket Finds Its natural equilibrium with the Merc El since the human body is mostly water and in relatively buoyant in comparison to Mercury if we were try to actually stand on Mercury our bodies would also try to find equilibrium probably submerge to the point of our knees Sibley your crotch and you know you couldn't actually stand on it a small spiders and insects can walk on Mercury simply because their light and they had they distribute their weight very well how far is human since most of our masses in her upper body we'd eventually fall over and we float like a cork it probably feel a lot like a waterbed if they want remembers those things or this bullet trying to balance that standing straight up as far as walking on it Mercury of the impossible  now since you made it this far in the video I will share with you little secret I have in almost all my videos I purposely spill Mercury and that is for the sake of people who aren't really paying attention and it's kind of funny to see people's heads explode and freak out cuz they assume that I am spilling it all over the ground and that's not the case we actually is a lot of precautions to prevent it from spilling on the ground and this is how we clean it up afterwards we use a syringe and submerge the Mercury under a thin layer of water that makes a lot easier to suck up and to do it dry anyway thanks for watching

Uploaded by Michael Garza.

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Mercury: The Liquid Metal

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