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[-] kowcop@aussie.zone 128 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] wahming@monyet.cc 112 points 1 year ago

Probably because they didn't know WHICH type of mercury you had. Organic mercury can kill on touch with a single drop. Best not to take chances.

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 58 points 1 year ago

I had to search for "organic mercury", it's dimethylmercury and it doesn't look like mercury at all. Do people really call it "mercury" or "organic mercury"? It's on par with pounds as a measure of mass, weight, and force by the amount of confusion, I'd say 🤔

::: spoiler sad story that was in the top of search results about dimethylmercury: Wikipedia excerpt: Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn (October 16, 1948 – June 8, 1997), also known as Karen Wetterhahn Jennette, was an American professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the extremely toxic organic mercury compound dimethylmercury (Hg(CH3)2). Protective gloves in use at the time of the incident provided insufficient protection, and exposure to only a few drops of the chemical absorbed through the gloves proved to be fatal after less than a year. sad but also a bit ironic fate 🫡 that's why I prefer not to do dangerous things even when protection and/or safety is in place.

[-] TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee 26 points 1 year ago

Do people really call it "mercury" or "organic mercury"? It's on par with pounds as a measure of mass, weight, and force by the amount of confusion, I'd say

No, I doubt it. There aren't very many uses for dimethylmercury due to its potential lethality. I would assume the people who actually use it in a lab setting are going to call it dimethylmercury, especially considering organic mercury usually refers to methylmercury, or one of the other less harmful organomercury compounds.

I think the confusion probably stems from the original article about the scientist who passed. Dimethylmercury is made from a reaction of methylmercury, and they are both organomercuric compounds.

[-] idiomaddict@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago
[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

Forgot about that, this certainly ~~adds insult to an injury~~ spices it up

[-] FilthyHookerSpit@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think chubbyemu did a video about this lady. Absolutely tragic and heart breaking.

[-] Neato@ttrpg.network 29 points 1 year ago

Yeah. Elemental is mostly harmless if you aren't around it for long and don't inhale vapors.

[-] Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] wahming@monyet.cc 3 points 1 year ago

That sounds like it would look really lovely. Got any pictures?

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[-] XTL@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] spittingimage@lemmy.world 101 points 1 year ago

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.)

[-] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago

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...

[-] insufferableninja@lemdro.id 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] overcast5348@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Is this the origin story of The Mad Hatter? 🙄

[-] spittingimage@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Could have been. I know Lewis Carroll liked to lampoon issues of the day in his writing.

[-] XTL@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

I'm kind of guessing the mad as a hatter phenomenon was known then, but don't really know.

[-] SPRUNT@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] darkpanda@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

Sneaky Simpsons reference here for those who didn’t notice.

[-] Taniwha420@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I thought it was the vapours from using mercury inside that got them.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

It's so much harder believing in six impossible things before breakfast when you're allergic to quicksilver.

[-] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 67 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

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?

[-] Instigate@aussie.zone 26 points 1 year ago

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment

[-] TIMMAY@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago

That's right, I often forget about that.

[-] Bsher8365@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago
[-] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

Is, uhh... Is he floatin' on a pool of mercury?

[-] Bsher8365@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

That he is. Looks like fun, right?

[-] Asidonhopo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Honestly he looks a bit anxious

[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 46 points 1 year ago

Pure mercury metal is pretty chill, just done fuck with organic mercury compounds

[-] Taniwha420@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Vapours too.

[-] Frogodendron@beehaw.org 29 points 1 year ago

Metallic elemental mercury (what you see in the picture) is relatively harmless to touch. Arguably, it’s more dangerous to rub a lead ingot, for example. However, mercury vapours (and mercury does evaporate slowly but consistently) absorb quite easily when you breath them with a ton of undesirable effects, often related to central nervous system, which is never a nice thing. Broken mercury thermometer won’t kill you. Playing with the puddle inside a non-ventilated room might kill you in several decades. Working in the non-open-air environment where mercury is always present will slowly worsen your health as mercury accumulates.

Organic compounds of mercury are what actually is nasty. A short contact with a few millilitres of that — and you will have to recover for a long-long time, if ever. However, the scary stories about methylmercury rarely mention that there are other organic compounds that are just as toxic or worse. I wouldn’t get close to any organic cadmium compound, for example, and would be extremely wary of its inorganic salts too. The thing is it’s extremely unlikely that you encounter any of these chemicals ever in your life, and if you do encounter them, then you are likely a professional who knows exactly how and why you are to deal with them.

[-] sudoreboot@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 year ago

Is no one going to comment on the font rendering

[-] nieceandtows@programming.dev 13 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 16 points 1 year ago

Both my parents have told me playing with mercury like this was pretty common when they were kids. One's still alive. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[-] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago

My aunt even drank some and nothing happened.

Metallic mercury should be fine. Not the fumes though.

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was commonly used as medicine for quite some time.

It didn't work, but then nothing much did at the time.

[-] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

It has such low bioavailability...

[-] Isoprenoid@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

Photo: Robert W. Madden

Oh, he be Madden alright.

[-] Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 6 points 1 year ago

Dads old mercury filled carburetor sinch worked much better than the oil filled one ever did.

[-] then_three_more@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I hear it's good for the French Disease.

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I can't read this. Reported.

[-] corvus@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago
[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

Not as much

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[-] NYPariah@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

This kills the idiot.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Sure is hand outside today

[-] Dasnap@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Delicious as Sunny D.

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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
417 points (100.0% liked)

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