Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/23/watch-mercury-react-with-aluminum.html
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Post contributed by Popkin
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Gallium works similarly; if you are one of those “But I need my nervous system!” types about neurotoxins.
Quibbling aside, by way of interest, mercury is only mostly forbidden. If you are “a representative of a government weather bureau or similar agency”, declare the mercury-containing instrument, and have it suitably packed in your carry-on bag you are allowed. “A small medical or clinical mercury thermometer for personal use” is also ok if in a protective case in checked baggage.
I assume that this doesn’t come up nearly as often anymore as it once did; but I like to think that it has given at least one NOAA instrument nerd the opportunity to flash their badge back at the TSA and tell them that this airframe-eating pressure sensor is travelling on official business and may not be obstructed.
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Airlines hate this one weird trick!
Works with aluminium too!
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I got some gallium and tried to do this - but I used a pop can and don’t think i scratched it enough. Or maybe didn’t leave it on enough.
Time lapse was involved in the LPL video: he did say it would take hours for the reaction to work.
Yes, but the thin aluminum cans I’ve seen react much quicker. It’s so much thinner than that lock.
Here’s the aluminum+mercury reaction in gif form. It’s spectacular.
H̶̜̙͍̟̙̙̔̃̆̀̓̾̆̎e̢̛̮̲͍̗̫̬̥͇̩̅́͐̇̓͐͘͞ c̵̺̤̭̀͆́͜͢͠͡ơ̶̡͖̫͈̰̒̔̑͆͞m̨̖̝̝̘̒͌̄̕̚͘͠ͅͅe̢̨̡̪̦͔͇̲͑̂͂͊̽̀͗̄̊̀s̸̥͙̮͈̪̿̊̈̃̏̊̊̾
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You probably need to sandpaper it to bring the Al to air, especially if you tried on the inside of the can; they have a quite resistant plastic protective film (but you might be aware of this, since you mentioned scratching).
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It’s also used for small scale gold mining. The mercury amalgamates with the gold from the ore - then they evaporate the mercury out and voila - gold!
And mercury poisoning.
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Yeah I did the outside to get to the metal through the print coating. But I probably didn’t do it enough.
IIRC, this is how a Nobel Prize winner hid his gold medal from the Nazis. I can’t go look it up right this second. But it is a really neat process to see.
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There are many rumors of what happened to the Nobel Prize medals of three Nobel Prize laureates in physics during World War II: the medals of the Germans Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925), and of the Dane Niels Bohr (1922). Professor Bohr’s Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen had been a refuge for German Jewish physists since 1933. Max von Laue and James Franck had deposited their medals there to keep them from being confiscated by the German authorities. After the occupation of Denmark in April 1940, the medals were Bohr’s first concern, according to the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy (also of Jewish origin and a 1943 Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry, picture to the right), who worked at the institute. In Hitler’s Germany it was almost a capital offense to send gold out of the country. Since the names of the laureates were engraved on the medals, their discovery by the invading forces would have had very serious consequences. To quote George de Hevesy (Adventures in Radioisotope Research, Vol. 1, p. 27, Pergamon, New York, 1962), who talks about von Laue’s medal: “I suggested that we should bury the medal, but Bohr did not like this idea as the medal might be unearthed. I decided to dissolve it. While the invading forces marched in the streets of Copenhagen, I was busy dissolving Laue’s and also James Franck’s medals. After the war, the gold was recovered and the Nobel Foundation generously presented Laue and Frank with new Nobel Prize medals.” de Hevesy wrote to von Laue after the war that the task of dissolving the medals had not been easy, as gold is “exceedingly unreactive and difficult to dissolve.” The Nazis occupied Bohr’s institute and searched it very carefully but they did not find anything. The medals quietly waited out the war in a solution of aqua regia. de Hevesy did not mention Niels Bohr’s own Nobel Prize medal but documents in the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen show that Niels Bohr’s Nobel Prize medal, as well as the Nobel Prize medal of the 1920 Danish laureate in physiology or medicine, August Krogh, had already been donated to an auction held on March 12, 1940 for the benefit of the Fund for Finnish Relief (Finlandshjälpen). The medals were bought by an anonymous buyer and donated to the Danish Historical Museum in Fredriksborg, where they are still kept. Regarding the Nobel Prize medals of von Laue and Franck, the Niels Bohr Archive has a letter from Niels Bohr dated January 24, 1950, about the delivery of gold to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm relating to these two medals. The proceedings of the Nobel Foundation on February 28, 1952, mention that Professor Franck received his recoined medal at a ceremony at the University of Chicago on January 31, 1952.
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