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Registered Member #2563
Joined: Mon Dec 21 2009, 10:17AM
Location: Australia
Posts: 280
a friend of mine recently gave me several kilos of liquid mercury, but there is some sort of dark fine metal looking powder on it, can anyone tell me what it is?
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
Old fashioned ways of cleaning up mercury include squeezing it through a chamois leather, pouring it into a separating funnel and draining off all but the floating layer, and even sucking up the mercury below the floating layer with a hypodermic syringe.
The floating layer could be all sorts of things - including rock dust if the Hg has been used in gold separation - depending on the metal's history.
Hg may contain other dissolved metals - amalgams - without appearing noticeably different.
Registered Member #2893
Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242
Yeah it's dust.
When you do anything with mercury, it gets dusty. Touching it leaves a fingerprint too. It's a dirt magnet.
My method of cleaning is to ill up a teflon squirt bottle and hold it upside-down over a flask. Then squeeze it out. It takes a while but as the Hg level lowers, dirt is left on the walls of the bottle. At the end, if you squeeze carefully you can get every drop of Hg back, and leave all the dirt in the bottle's squirt part (nipple? bleh, vocabulary)
Another method is to vacuum filter it, but that requires some glass pieces I don't have.
Now as for the mercury, Have you tried floating things yet? Have you amalgamated a penny yet? Have you dissolved gold yet? (those are three things anyone with Hg must try!)
Once, just for curiosity, I tried making a speaker out of Hg. I took a superstrong NdFeB magnet, and made a small clay cup over it. I put a few drops of Hg in there, and added lead wires. It didn't work too well as a speaker because o the ultra-low impedance. But it was interesting hooking it up to a SLA 12V battery. The Hg wiggled a little when I connected and disconnected it.
Also, how many kilos? I have 7 lbs, which is plenty, but I'd still like more. (no I don't plan on buying yours, as I know Australian customs is run by Nazis.)
Other things you can try is making a mercury level by putting some in a glass tube (one end sealed) and sealing the other end (with a torch or stopper). Ive compared Hg levels to air bubble ones and the Hg ones seem more "sensitive"
Registered Member #2563
Joined: Mon Dec 21 2009, 10:17AM
Location: Australia
Posts: 280
I don't believe ill go touching it anytime soon anyways, so i wont worry about fingerprints lol. as for playing with it i have done nothing as of yet, as i want it cleaned first. i have around 8 kilos.. a friend of mine gave me it as he has some unearthly amount that i have no idea how he obtained... yes Aussie customs is a third Reich Nazi base. but i will definitely make good use of what i have. i might just try a cheaper alternative of sucking the clean stuff out of the middle with a syringe to begin with as i left all my glassware when i moved....
Registered Member #2463
Joined: Wed Nov 11 2009, 03:49AM
Location:
Posts: 1546
Have you made mercury putty? All it takes is a battery, some mercury and another liquid. You pass the current through the mercury and the other liquid and soon the mercury gells up into a putty, looks like mercury. Leave it a while and it reverts back to mercury. Its an amalgam.
The image of the Hewettic Rectifier was nice. We used those to run DC motors and one day we wanted to plug-jog something and pushed in the wrong relay and almost blew one to smithereens. We spent the rest of the day making adapters so the fuses we had would fit into the holders for the obsolete ones we blew.
Registered Member #2261
Joined: Mon Aug 03 2009, 01:19AM
Location: London, UK
Posts: 581
radiotech wrote ...
Have you made mercury putty? All it takes is a battery, some mercury and another liquid. You pass the current through the mercury and the other liquid and soon the mercury gells up into a putty, looks like mercury. Leave it a while and it reverts back to mercury. Its an amalgam.
Sounds like 'Ammonium amalgam', where the ammonium molecule behaves like a metal. You make it by electrolysing an ammonium salt solution with a mercury cathode. I tried it once and it was worth it to see a unique material. My old chemistry book described it as having a 'buttery consistency', which would be about right if you use carbonated butter!
Registered Member #2463
Joined: Wed Nov 11 2009, 03:49AM
Location:
Posts: 1546
Its ammonium chloride solution. All the 2500 year old tricks with mercury are frowned on now! And since electricity hadn't been invented yet, there is no reason to believe the ancients had a supply of AA cells. Perhaps you can make some NH4.
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