Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 48 total)
  • Where can I get Mercury from?
  • plant
    Free Member

    Do thermometers still use Mercury?

    Are there other readily available sources of Mercury?

    Cheers,

    Carl.

    neilsonwheels
    Free Member

    Who are you poisoning.?

    Prey tell…

    plant
    Free Member

    Me – probably …..

    Nothing sinister – honest!

    Ambrose
    Full Member

    Chemical suppliers, try yellow pages/ google. Some thermometers do still contain mercury.

    richcc
    Free Member

    What do you want it for? Barometers used to be the classic application think that mercury barometers are effectively 'banned'

    shakeythejakey
    Free Member

    old mercury tip switches maybe? hard to come across though in all probability. I'm dead curious as to what you want it for…

    richcc
    Free Member

    Sink U bends in 6th forms and undergrad chem labs arevalways a rich source too

    deadlydarcy
    Free Member

    Difficult enough to get hold of. I assume this is for your photography again. Try Aldrich. Oh, and you'll probably be flagged up at GCHQ.

    samuri
    Free Member

    mercury switches or tilt switches, old ones, have a bit in. You'll find them in old executive cars or old thermostats. Mercury is insanely toxic though, do you really want anything to do with it?

    plant
    Free Member

    Old Mercury barometers could be a source but it would mean breaking them.

    Can see me being arrested creeping around the school labs. Anyone know if school labs are allowed to store it?

    What do I want it for? Get me some and I'll show you! 😉

    gwaelod
    Free Member

    Most modern thermometers use alchol now, modern barometer use aneroid chambers too so no joy there. You need an old glass tube barometer from an antique shop. As above Mercury is nasty stuff. The reason the Mad Hatter was mad was because hatters used to use mercury to prepare the felt for hats and got poisoned by the fumes.

    shakeythejakey
    Free Member

    what quantities are we talking here then? If tiny (like a grain of rice) then one tilt switch would easily do it, but if you want quite a bit then i think you'll be stuck

    big_n_daft
    Free Member

    I think it's heavily controlled

    some EU directive

    sv
    Full Member

    The video with an old metal iron floating in a pool of mercury was pretty cool IMO.

    plant
    Free Member

    Well ….. as much as I can get hold of but any quantity would suit my purpose.

    kimbers
    Full Member

    yep its effectively been outlawed in evey lab in the country, including in thermometers, it really is very toxic

    http://www.veegee.com/msds/m1001.pdf

    your best bet is to get hold of an old thermometer

    gusamc
    Free Member

    break into a lighthouse, climb to top, drill hole in lightbase.

    well it would have worked years ago …………

    shakeythejakey
    Free Member

    haha, the more you say the more dodgy it sounds plant! 😀

    Kuco
    Full Member

    So how do I dispose of about 2 thimbles full of mercury?

    plant
    Free Member

    You give it to me!

    Kuco
    Full Member

    I'm sure royal mail will love that going through the postal system.

    plant
    Free Member

    How would they know?

    If you're serious, where are you?

    rightplacerighttime
    Free Member

    I believe it's mercury vapour that's toxic. Mercury itself can't be that bad – we used to piss about rolling blobs of it around petri dishes in chemistry lessons when I was a lad. Also, most people my age 40+ have got it in their amalgam fillings.

    Maybe you could take up grave robbing and melting down fillings?

    Kuco
    Full Member

    I'm Northamptonshire. My old man use to use it where he worked. The Sodium he brought home was a lot more fun to play with 🙂

    Kuco
    Full Member

    I watched a documentary about the Emperor who built the great wall of China, his physicians told him to take mercury balls as it will prolong his life. All it did was make him paranoid and slowly killed him.

    GrahamS
    Full Member
    sv
    Full Member

    Mercury boiling point? It's low isn't it.

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    Liquid mercury is not that toxic – low bioavailability. The vapour is more toxic, not something you would want to consistently inhale. It's the organomercury compounds that are really dangerous – a drop of methylmercury on the skin can and has killed people.

    I reckon most schools and universities would have plenty of spare mercury sitting around. It's being phased out of pressure devices so there's loads around – no one is going to give it to a stranger though, you'd likely need to know someone working in the lab.

    Kuco
    Full Member

    Try this Emperors Qin Shi Huang tomb 100 rivers made with mercury, representations of 'the heavenly bodies', Modern archaeologists have located the tomb, and have inserted probes deep into it. The probes revealed abnormally high quantities of mercury, some 100 times the naturally occurring rate, suggesting at least part of the legend can be trusted.

    Not even the Chinese government will dig it up as the legend is China will fall if they do.

    Ambrose
    Full Member

    Last time I looked we had several kg of mercury in one of the poisons cupboards at work. My lab gets periodically tested for the stuff. I have a wonderful parquet floor that is kept nicely sealed thank you very much because whilst I don't us Hg thermometers I'm certain that my predescessors did do so and that a number were dropped over the years.

    Is this what you want it for?

    Swiftacular
    Free Member

    We used to have jam jars full of the stuff from disposing of old pressure transmitters and level switches at work, ( more for the hassle of the paperwork getting rid of it than the novelty value). The plant has now been pulled down though, about 6 years ago, and i'd have though most of that age were going the same way.

    aP
    Free Member

    In the early 80s I worked in an analytical chemistry lab that was involved in a nationwide mercury alert after someone dropped a thermometer down the back of a drying oven……
    A couple of years ago I was doing visits to some tunnels about 30 metres below parts of London which had mercury arc rectifiers in a cupboard – oh, and enormous amounts of UV as well.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    i remember getting right boloking from th elab supervisor at uni for having a droplet (litteraly half a grain of uncooked rice) left in the bottom of a reaction (its used to carry out reactions using metals in their "liquid" state without stupid temperatures, by puting them in solution). Thats how toxic it is.

    And dont wory about the distinction between mercury and methylmercury in terms of toxicology, bacteria will hapily turn one into the other.

    uplink
    Free Member

    We used to play with it at school – let it run across our hands etc. & chase it across the bench

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    uplink, thankfully the 'elf'n'safety nanny state prohibits that kind of stupidity now, allong with washing your hand in benzene to get rid of paint.

    uplink
    Free Member

    Absolutely – if it wasn't for all these new regs, who knows how dead I'd be by now?

    it makes me shiver thinking about it 😉

    RaveyDavey
    Free Member

    Whatever you want it for can't outway the H&S issues!! I can use some pretty toxic chemicals in my job 'This causes cancer' is often seen on the tins 🙁 but I wouldn't want to be handling mercury without proper protective measures. If it gets into your body through the skin or via injestion its there for good and damaging you all the time.

    dan1980
    Free Member

    Assuming this is linked to your thread about wanting to take pictures of immiscible liquids, Mercury is a really bad idea health wise and almost certainly unsuitable for what you want.

    It's very dense, so will sink to the bottom and just puddle at the bottom of the container.

    Sandwich
    Full Member

    It's also interesting stuff if your lab catches fire. The basic advice is strip the building interior back to concrete/brick shell and start again. The vapour gets everywhere.

    Macgyver
    Full Member

    "break into a lighthouse, climb to top, drill hole in lightbase.

    well it would have worked years ago ………… "

    I know of at least one lighthouse that still floats its friscnal lense in on a mercury bearing. Best part of 4 tons of glass too!

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 48 total)

The topic ‘Where can I get Mercury from?’ is closed to new replies.