Originally published at: Anvil floating in tub of mercury | Boing Boing
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This is why Dwarves have a system of quicksilver flumes for transporting ore and iron quickly between their mines, smelters and forges
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This is really good to know! When I was a kid I broke open a bunch of Mercury thermostats and kept the stuff in a little jar. I’d play with it bare handed…it was so cool, but I’ve since worried.
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Next up: a telescope made from a spinning tub of mercury. It’s been done before.
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The video that auto played after the floating anvil says that liquid mercury isn’t very toxic, it’s the vapor that is dangerous.
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I need to get this over to Wile E Coyote Super Genius.
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I had no idea that the average person could just go and get copious amounts of mercury.
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Don’t try this at home.
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In gallon jugs!?
EDIT: According to the internet, quicksilver is about $1000 a flask, which is about 2.6 liters, so that is a very expensive bucket he has there. Maybe $10k worth of quicksilver! Weighing close to half a ton.
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Conversely, when you try to float an object made of mercury in a vat of liquid iron you get the final boss battle from Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
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Mercury sinking in Iron makes sense, but that T-800 must have had some incredibly dense alloy in its skeleton to drag down all that meat into the liquid iron.
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Mercury is so cool. You can see why the ancients were mystified by its other worldly properties.
I got some gallium to do similar things, but not enough to float around.
He’s done quite a few mercury vids over the years, including flushing mercury down a specially rigged toilet and also attempting to stand on mercury. Cody doesn’t upload as frequently as he used to but its a treat when he does.
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Me too, but it hasn aggect my #$7t…
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Ummm, no - the vapour is dangerous. The least serious effects, such as loss of fine motor skills and tremors occur at very low levels of exposure:
https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/iris2/chemicalLanding.cfm?substance_nmbr=370
Which makes me wonder how many people were affected by these - step forward the coal-fired mercury vapour turbine:
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Amazingly, that 15 year old who injected himself repeatedly with Mercury in an attempt to become Wolverine is apparently suffering no chronic effects.
Prior to this the kid has intentionally gotten himself bitten by spiders in an attempt to become Spider-man. No word on if they were radioactive spiders, though.
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Maybe he really DOES have mutant healing powers!
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IIRC, this is how the bearings for some lighthouses work
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I would have loved to see Qin’s tomb - “The first emperors tomb is located under a deep mound of dirt. The tomb itself is about as big as a football pitch.
The tomb is said to have a a 3D map of all of china complete with rivers oceans and swampland’s filled with mercury. There was some kind of machine that would circulate the mercury, and as long as that machine was working and the rivers and oceans kept flowing the emperor would continue to rule the whole of china, in his Minnie, enclosed world.” Qin Shi Huang's tomb - Qin Shi Huang
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It would be an extraordinary sight wouldn’t it? Skeptoid has more on this tomb - but there probably isn’t that much mercury in it:
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