Tag: mercury

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Mercury Compared to Water

Mercury Compared to Water

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This is going to be a short post because I’ll be comparing Mercury to Water. I’ll be trying to find out why mercury is 14 times denser than water:

I poured all of my mercury into a petri dish and I have 22.70 grams of it. So I added the same weight of water into a petri dish and weighed it.

Mercury
Water

And after that, I pour the mercury and water into beakers to measure them.

Mercury 1.6 ml
Water 22 ml

There are 1.6 ml of mercury and 22 ml of water. That explains why mercury is 14 times denser than water (22 ÷ 1.6 = 13.75 ≈ 14).

Here are some more comparisons:

 Mercury  Water
Color  Metalic Silver  Clear/Transparent
Density  13.534 g/cm3  1 g/cm3
Conductivity  High  Medium
Toxicity  High  None

 

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Making a Mercury Switch

Making a Mercury Switch

Remember that experiment about mercury? I tried to show you that mercury can conduct electricity. And it did. I studied it a little bit more and I found this:

A Simple (Tilt) Mercury Switch:

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It’s similar to the one we did the last time. Instead of tilting it around, what if you suck the mercury in and out. Isn’t that better? I’ll try to build one just for fun.

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I made a hole in a little container (what don’t know what to call it) and put a syringe in there. Then, I poked holes in the bottom and glued 2 wires in, and poured the mercury in.

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Mercury sucked:

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Works pretty nicely. I hoped you enjoyed!

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Does Mercury Conduct Electricity?

Does Mercury Conduct Electricity?

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I bought this from my science shop yesterday so that I could perform more experiments.

Why is it a liquid?

The reason for mercury being a liquid is complex. It is heavy; a chunk of iron can float on mercury. Compared to other metals, it does not conduct heat well. However, it conducts electricity fairly well.

Mercury is the only metal that is a liquid at normal temperatures and pressure. What makes mercury so special? Basically, it’s because mercury is bad at sharing… electrons, that is.

Most metal atoms readily share valence electrons with other atoms. The electrons in a mercury atom are bound more tightly than usual to the nucleus. In fact, the s electrons are moving so fast and close to the nucleus they exhibit relativistic effects, behaving as if they were more massive than slower-moving electrons.

Why does it conduct electricity?

Mercury is a liquid metal. As with all metals, the outer electrons are detached from the nuclei and form a kind of “sea of electrons” in which the rest of the atoms sit. A small electrical force, in other words a voltage, placed across any two points in this sea will make the electrons move, and that constitutes a current and makes a metal electrically conducting.

I wanted to see that mercury can conduct electricity. I opened mercury bottle, it has an inner closure, I’m not going to take it out because we need it.

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I’m going to put pins in it.

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I will flip the bottle and the mercury will be in contact with the pins and the circuit will turn on.

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It works nicely!

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This chemical will go into my favorite chemical list!

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-mercury-conduct-electricity-so-well

https://www.thoughtco.com/why-is-mercury-a-liquid-608454