Mercury Bailey
Hg
Mercury
Bailey M-W
Atomic Number:
Atomic number of an element is the number of protons in an atom
Mercury's atomic number is 80
Atomic Mass:
Atomic mass of an element is the number of protons plus the number of neutrons
Mercury's atomic mass is 200.59
Mercury literally drips from the caves in the ancient mines at Almaden, Spain! Mercury must have seemed magical when there was no way to understand it. But is a liquid metal really so magical? Mercury is actually a perfectly normal metal, just one that is in a different range of temperature. If you get any metal hot enough it will turn liquid, but mercury is simply a liquid at room temperature. If you freeze mercury in liquid nitrogen, it turns into a tough metal similar to tin.
For years mercury was seen as as a fantastic thing to play with, or use for whatever it seemed usefull for. Tragically mercury was slowly and invisibly damaging and poisoning everyone who came into contact with it. Mercury would damage the central nervous system and
eventually make all who touched it insane. Mercury could be considered the worst kind of poison because you don't realize that you are poisoned until years after the fact. This delay has kept people from realising mercury's toxicity for hundreds of years.
What is Mercury in?
-batteries
-thermometers
-barometers
-fluorescent lamps
Interesting Facts about Mercury:
-Named from the Latin word hydrargyrum meaning liquid silver
-A salad bowl filled with mercury could float a cannonball
-If a person were to fill a bathtub with mercury they could sit on the surface!
Watch this cool video of a cannonball floating in mercury!
Start at 10 seconds
Sources:
Information: The Elements; A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe
By: Theodore Gray
Copyright 2009 by Theodore Gray
Published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
ISBN-13: 978-1-57912-814-2