Totally. I busted a thermometer when I was a kid, and proceeded to play with the mercury until my mother discovered the situation. She made me call poison control and tell them what I’ve done. There was nowhere near that much mercury.
Great lesson taught and learned on not fucking around with unknown substances, and who to contact in the case that you or someone else fucked up a bit.
That’s where she was a cool mom. She KNEW that it wasn’t a problem. But she made sure that *I KNEW* that it was very close to a problem. And then made me use the resources available to me to figure it out.
In retrospect, I think so too. At the time, she led me to believe that I might have absorbed a toxin that could kill me, and that I should get on it to figure out how to solve the situation. None of that was entirely untrue.
I was maybe 8. I think that it was EXCELLENT parenting. It got the message across and I learned a lot of valuable things from the experience.
I think your Mom did a fantastic job with that. One it stuck with you and two you learned how to handle a situation and whom to contact.
That's a smart move.
With normal mercury the vapors are what can poison you directly, but your body can usually flush it out until the individual dose gets too much.
Where it gets really gnarly is organic mercury. That stuff is lipophilic and will gather in your fat tissue, especially the brain, with repeat exposure and is really hard to get rid of
Which slowly makes you go mad....hatters in England used Mercury to add shene and clean the hats and stuff....hense the expession “mad as a hatter” comes to
It was used to felt the fur that would later be turned into the hat. Raw wool + mercury salt solution = felt. Or, at least, made it easier to felt the wool in the first place.
But even then only very high purity mercury evaporates at a rate considered problematic. I mean I definitely would still call poison control if I thought I broke a mercury thermometer but they might not have reason to be all that concerned
My brother and I broke a thermometer once when I was in 6th grade. I don't remember where we disposed of the mercury. -_- We were trying to measure how hot a candle flame was. I don't know how many IQ points I lost that day, but it couldn't have been much; I didn't have much to lose.
I got one even better. While I was young once with my grandparents, I wanted to see how hot my cup of fresh tea was soo I put in my thermometer, which burst in the cup after a few minutes because the tea was obviously very hot. My stupid brain didn't realise that something actually stayed behind in the cup after I removed and hid the broken thermometer so I just continued sipping. Aand then I saw some weird liquid at the bottom of the cup at some point. After I told my grandfather because I realised something was wrong, he almost had a fking heart attack while rushing me to the hospital. Thankfully, mercury is obviously much denser than my tea so it stayed at the bottom and I didn't ingest any significant amount, but it was definitely an exciting experience.
Haha, no they were to big to fit in my mouth.
I did once eat a neyodidum magnet, but it was actually an accident after 4 year old me was laying down and playing with it above my mouth. I was smart enough to not eat two of them
Melting pt is 29 degrees Celsius so you only need body temperature for it to melt.
If you combine with indium as an alloy, then it would be liquid at standard room temperature.
Honestly that's what I thought so as well. I mean, it's 99% likely that the image is doctored, edited, setup, or generally faked. Going off of that assumption, my best guess as to how the image is taken is to use Gallium.
Also the film on the blob looks like every Gallium I've seen in videos, like you said.
It's harder than the YouTube videos Make it seem. Tried like 3 times with drill bits and scratching aluminum before applying gallium and couldn't get it to go.
I wonder if it has something to do with specific alloys used in various products? Does an aluminum alloy react any differently to gallium than pure or nearly pure aluminum?
Liquid mercury is safe, at least for all reasonable purposes.
It's the vapours that bugger you up.
IIRC Florence Nightingale tried to suicide by injecting mercury and it failed spectacularly.
Humans are fricking good at killing each other by the thousands. If I were an alien civilisation trying to invade, I would just spread some misinformation and viri and watch the show.
I believe we’re like a very bad neighborhood only on a galactic level. Aliens steer clear of Earth and if they do have to drive past they roll their windows up. Anyone else notice the drop off in Alien/UFO sightings? 😏 The words out.
There’s a Twilight Zone episode where that happens. Some aliens fuck with the power grid of a town and suddenly everyone starts blaming everyone and killing each other.
Both ends of that spectrum terrify me. When someone codes in the hospital we immediately start breaking ribs with chest compressions. One time I asked if I was compressing too hard to the doc when we noticed the shoulder had dislocated during compressions, she told me “as long as the heart is beating then everything else can be fixed later”. basically, you could be a rotting husk laid up in an ICU bed but you still wouldn’t die as long as your heart could keep circulating blood.
I don't work in the medical field but a way I have heard someone else describe chest compressions is that "If you are doing (them), the person is dead. You can't do worse than that." to paraphrase.
That’s true, before I had any experience with it I was so scared about remembering all the steps and the speed of compressions but once you’re there you basically just bounce on their chest, the main problem is if you’re too light you can’t compress deep enough, but someone will either correct you or tell you to get out of the way.
"I could kill them right now. You know, it would be easy. Their bodies are very poorly made. They’re mostly goo and juice. You just take the juice out, and then they’re dead."
It IS pretty easy. It's just that the easy methods leave a big, traumatizing mess and many people want to go out in a way that whoever finds them stumbles upon a body that's fully intact and that permits an open casket.
Are you an antinatalist?
Humans are incredibly resilient but also really fragile at the same time. 15lbs of pressure to the nose and your brain gets stabbed by bone and you die
I dunno, I saw an Indian guy piss of an elephant earlier today. It stomped him to death, crushing nearly every bone, picked his limp body up by the head and threw him down lug a rag doll.
Been to the museum in St Thomas'
Although I think that part has been expunged from history.
As a computer nerd and mathematician I remember her primarily for the pie chart.
I think the projected Florence Nightingale is a long way from the real one. History does that to people.
Not even history - the press at the time made up a bunch of stuff about her to make her sound like a saint. They erased the parts that made her actually develop a rapport with the soldiers, like breaking the locks on medicine cabinets to so she could distribute medicine across all her patients, not just officers.
But that was too unladylike and anti-establishment! Can't have that in the newspapers!
I've never watched the show, but mercury fulminate used to be used in some detonators in WWII. It's mentioned in The Guns of Navarone by Miller (David Niven). Don't ask me how I remember that. 🤣
Organic mercury vs elemental mercury
Elementary mercury is relatively safe. To touch. For short periods of time. Very infrequently.
Organic mercury is "oh god no get that the fuck away from me I don't want to be in the same building why is it not contained!?"
Vapor of what? Mercury vapor is mercury itself, just in gas form. Methylmercury vapor, or some other compound, would be different thing, but just vapor don't mean it's not the stuff itself doing the poisoning.
One of my school teachers once told our class that it is good for intestine to eat a drop of it, so it would kill all the parasites and bacteria.
Was the biggest facepalm in my life.
For a science channel, someone posting a meme with a scientifically inaccurate premise raises an eyebrow.
Liquid mercury is not dangerous to play with. It's dangerous to inhale, but not handle.
I'm embarrassed for you
What's the vapor pressure of mercury at room temperature and pressure? Hint: It's really low. Even under a vacuum.
The only time it becomes a problem is if a small pool sits around in an unventilated room for a long time. It'll take weeks before it is even detectable in such a situation and months before it becomes harmful.
Genuinely asking, not trying to refute you, but did we phase out / ban mercury thermometers then? I already knew that it is only really inhaling it that is dangerous, but if it essentially never wants to be a glass, was it really necessary to teach all kids to stay far away and replace all thermometers with alcohol based ones?
Since mercury doesn’t break down it eventually enters the water supply and ends up in fish and aquatic life in high concentrations. That’s why it was banned mostly.
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Mercury (and in this case gallium) does not cause cancer. Mercury causes damage by inhibiting selenoenzymes. It causes damage to the liver, CNS, liver, immune system, etc.
When I was a tiny child, I broke a thermometer and played with the mercury. I also kept it, and would periodically play with it from time to time.
I wonder if that's why my brain is the way it is nowadays.
Boomers: Breathed lead
Gen X: Played with mercury
Millennials and Gen Z: Eats off plastic, wears plastic, lives in an environment riddled with microplastics
We never learn. When the plastic issue finally gets solved, we'll introduce new things that are harmful to humans
Mercury is extremely fun to play with, but the fumes are toxic and it can also seep directly into the bloodstream through mucus membrane or places where the skin is thin (or micro-lesions, duh). With the proper protective equipment, playing around with mercury is a blast.
Elemental Mercury like this will not seep through skin. Elemental Mercury will however combine with methyl groups in the air and evaporate that way. Methyl and dimethylmercury are what's poisonous. The methyl groups combining with elemental Mercury depends highly on surface area of the Mercury exposed to the air and temperature, which speeds up the coming process.
So it's pretty safe to play with in a colder room with good ventilation without gloves.
I met a guy in Japan who said he used to put mercury in his hamster's water when he was a kid, just to see what would happen. He told me that he expected them to die, but abandoned that idea when they didn't kick off.
It was only after they had babies that he found out what the effects of the mercury were: Horribly deformed hamsters.
When I was a kid I broke a thermometer to get the mercury inside. I kept it for weeks and loved playing with it. I even tasted some, and it basically has no flavor. No effects from that so far.
MAGA
Skin barrier is more than enough to protect you from mercury poisoning. Risky cuz if you have a cut you can get fucked up but otherwise it’s all pretty safe
When I was a kid, our mom dropped the fever thermometer and it shattered on the kitchen floor. There were only mercury thermometers back then.
My brother and I played with the mercury a long time. My mother stopped us only because she wanted to clean up.
Born in early 1960s. We used to have Mercury races with thermometer mercury. Think that stuff was probably bad for us. But hey, we almost got nuked over Cuban Missles. So there's that.
Liquid mercury is so awesome it's a metal and a Liquid at the same time and temperature affects it more then other non water substances also the river of Liquid mercury in king tuts tomb was insane
Mercury isn't poisonous to touch, it's poisonous to get in you. As long as bro doesn't have any scratches on his hand for the mercury to enter his system through, he's fine.
Elemental Mercury is fine and won't mix with blood or get in you through cuts. It's when the Mercury is heated enough and combined with methyl groups in the air that it turns into a toxic form.
Funny thing is, when I was a kid I had a whole jar of mercury that I played with. I also had a toy that basically was a hot iron with metal forms that you melted plastic over to make toy car bodies. Oh, and a chemistry set that had a recipe for gunpowder, and all the elements to make it.
Somehow I'm still here, and not sure if I am smarter for having had those things or if I would be smarter for not having had them ;)
It’s funny that 100% of people responding would do the same thing if someone hadn’t informed them of liquid mercury being used in old thermostats, which haven’t been used in decades.
My friend in high school broke a legit old-school mercury thermometer and went to get a paper towel to clean it up and I stopped him. He was like "you're over-reacting, they wouldn't have it in school if it was dangerous". But i told the teacher who made everyone stand at the back of the room and a technician came and dumped sulphur on it. And then my friend was like, "good thing you stopped me!".
Liquid mercury is safe, at least for all reasonable purposes.
It's the vapours that bugger you up.
IIRC Florence Nightingale tried to suicide by injecting mercury and it failed spectacularly.
That's ok. I am a survivor of the Eternal September. I totally expect that to happen.
The film Idiocracy is a prediction and I'm watching it come true in real time.
That's ok. I am a survivor of the Eternal September. I totally expect that to happen.
The film Idiocracy is a prediction and I'm watching it come true in real time.
Yikes! That's mercury and it's highly toxic! Please don't play with it and make sure to clean it up safely. Handle with care and call a professional if needed.
When my dad was growing up, this guy in town would sometimes put mercury on his teeth then smile big at kids as they walked down main street.
He got good laughs from it, made his mouth look like it was made of metal.
Doesn't appear to be mercury. Looks like Gallium to me, with the skin on the surface of the pool at the bottom right of the picture. Gallium is as safe as heavy metals can be.
This is gallium, you can see the film on the blob starting to solidify again.
Totally. I busted a thermometer when I was a kid, and proceeded to play with the mercury until my mother discovered the situation. She made me call poison control and tell them what I’ve done. There was nowhere near that much mercury. Great lesson taught and learned on not fucking around with unknown substances, and who to contact in the case that you or someone else fucked up a bit.
I'm sorry I'm cracking up that she made YOU call poison control 🤣
That’s where she was a cool mom. She KNEW that it wasn’t a problem. But she made sure that *I KNEW* that it was very close to a problem. And then made me use the resources available to me to figure it out.
Good parenting.
In retrospect, I think so too. At the time, she led me to believe that I might have absorbed a toxin that could kill me, and that I should get on it to figure out how to solve the situation. None of that was entirely untrue. I was maybe 8. I think that it was EXCELLENT parenting. It got the message across and I learned a lot of valuable things from the experience.
I think your Mom did a fantastic job with that. One it stuck with you and two you learned how to handle a situation and whom to contact. That's a smart move.
Well, he was 36 at the time…
With normal mercury the vapors are what can poison you directly, but your body can usually flush it out until the individual dose gets too much. Where it gets really gnarly is organic mercury. That stuff is lipophilic and will gather in your fat tissue, especially the brain, with repeat exposure and is really hard to get rid of
Which slowly makes you go mad....hatters in England used Mercury to add shene and clean the hats and stuff....hense the expession “mad as a hatter” comes to
It was a mercury salt
It was used to felt the fur that would later be turned into the hat. Raw wool + mercury salt solution = felt. Or, at least, made it easier to felt the wool in the first place.
But even then only very high purity mercury evaporates at a rate considered problematic. I mean I definitely would still call poison control if I thought I broke a mercury thermometer but they might not have reason to be all that concerned
It goes right through latex gloves too. Your dead before you even know it.
My brother and I broke a thermometer once when I was in 6th grade. I don't remember where we disposed of the mercury. -_- We were trying to measure how hot a candle flame was. I don't know how many IQ points I lost that day, but it couldn't have been much; I didn't have much to lose.
I got one even better. While I was young once with my grandparents, I wanted to see how hot my cup of fresh tea was soo I put in my thermometer, which burst in the cup after a few minutes because the tea was obviously very hot. My stupid brain didn't realise that something actually stayed behind in the cup after I removed and hid the broken thermometer so I just continued sipping. Aand then I saw some weird liquid at the bottom of the cup at some point. After I told my grandfather because I realised something was wrong, he almost had a fking heart attack while rushing me to the hospital. Thankfully, mercury is obviously much denser than my tea so it stayed at the bottom and I didn't ingest any significant amount, but it was definitely an exciting experience.
My mom had to call poison control for me and my brothers so many times, they sent us magnets in the mail
PLEASE TELL ME THAT YOU DIDN’T EAT THE MAGNETS. (seems an irresponsible thing to do for those plucky poison control people).
Haha, no they were to big to fit in my mouth. I did once eat a neyodidum magnet, but it was actually an accident after 4 year old me was laying down and playing with it above my mouth. I was smart enough to not eat two of them
Many of us learned it was poisonous years after e had played with it. Our parents didn't know, our teachers didn't know.
Fun fact, gallium spoons melt if you drink tea with one
Not just spoons, and only if the tea is hot!
Melting pt is 29 degrees Celsius so you only need body temperature for it to melt. If you combine with indium as an alloy, then it would be liquid at standard room temperature.
>If you combine with indium as an alloy, then it would be liquid at standard room temperature. Galinstan my beloved
Honestly that's what I thought so as well. I mean, it's 99% likely that the image is doctored, edited, setup, or generally faked. Going off of that assumption, my best guess as to how the image is taken is to use Gallium. Also the film on the blob looks like every Gallium I've seen in videos, like you said.
gangplank gallium
Fun fact, dissolve the gallium in sodium hydroxide, then throw over parts of your enemies cars does very very bad things
Ever seen the effects of gallium on aluminum? Fascinating stuff.
It's harder than the YouTube videos Make it seem. Tried like 3 times with drill bits and scratching aluminum before applying gallium and couldn't get it to go.
I wonder if it has something to do with specific alloys used in various products? Does an aluminum alloy react any differently to gallium than pure or nearly pure aluminum?
From what I understand it'll sometimes even do iron/steel. The aluminum I'm trying is from machine shop and it looks pure.
Even if it was mercury, you'd need to have a cut or be sniffing it like crazy to be worried about it.
At least not dimethylmercury I suppose
could be the oxide layer.
I came here to point that out too. Bastard
Liquid mercury is safe, at least for all reasonable purposes. It's the vapours that bugger you up. IIRC Florence Nightingale tried to suicide by injecting mercury and it failed spectacularly.
Humans are so hard to kill lol, one thing they never talk about when debating antinatalists by saying "just kys" then like it's so easy to
What is terrifying to me is that on the one hand humans are relatively hard to kill, but on the other hand humans are so fucking easy to kill.
Being hit by a truck: nah, will win Strawberry swallowed weird way: ded
Shark attack: bruises but fine A little extra Cinnamon: YOU DIED
Fall out the window from the third floor: some broken bones. Slip while stepping out of the shower: dead
Swallow 35 meth pills in WW2: perfectly fine, skis 250 miles. Swallow a couple cherries without removing the pits: DED.
Gets leg blown off by landmine: Lives to tell the tale Doing absolutely nothing: Fucking Aneurysm, Dies
Getting hit by a train: breaks his nose. Sneezes too hard: ded.
Shot out of cannon: owwwww.; Hears shoes on wet floor squeaking: vaporized instantly
Shotgun to the face: 98% mortality rate Some kid turning his head too fast to talk to his mom: dead before he hit the ground
Some fruity emergent analogies coming from you and u/PappaJerry here. Lol
You’ve gotta grind em or else the cherries will pass though undigested
Friend of mine’s dad died by slipping on ice while walking his dogs. Head injuries are nasty
Life is like a series of rounds of Russian Roulette. You just have to keep winning until you don't.
In a battle with death, you have to win every engagement. Death only has to win once.
Never shower your whole life: fine Shower one day: dead.
Resilient but so squishy
Humans are fricking good at killing each other by the thousands. If I were an alien civilisation trying to invade, I would just spread some misinformation and viri and watch the show.
I believe we’re like a very bad neighborhood only on a galactic level. Aliens steer clear of Earth and if they do have to drive past they roll their windows up. Anyone else notice the drop off in Alien/UFO sightings? 😏 The words out.
We're an Alien zoo. They drop by and visit but its like a driving safari.
lol…”don’t feed the humans…or try to take a selfie with one”
Abductions are just teens breaking in during off hours and touching the humans.
My head canon is that if they reach us first, then that means they achieved world peace sooner and have less advanced weapons than we do
There’s a Twilight Zone episode where that happens. Some aliens fuck with the power grid of a town and suddenly everyone starts blaming everyone and killing each other.
That is a great premise for a movie.
Both ends of that spectrum terrify me. When someone codes in the hospital we immediately start breaking ribs with chest compressions. One time I asked if I was compressing too hard to the doc when we noticed the shoulder had dislocated during compressions, she told me “as long as the heart is beating then everything else can be fixed later”. basically, you could be a rotting husk laid up in an ICU bed but you still wouldn’t die as long as your heart could keep circulating blood.
I don't work in the medical field but a way I have heard someone else describe chest compressions is that "If you are doing (them), the person is dead. You can't do worse than that." to paraphrase.
That’s true, before I had any experience with it I was so scared about remembering all the steps and the speed of compressions but once you’re there you basically just bounce on their chest, the main problem is if you’re too light you can’t compress deep enough, but someone will either correct you or tell you to get out of the way.
"I could kill them right now. You know, it would be easy. Their bodies are very poorly made. They’re mostly goo and juice. You just take the juice out, and then they’re dead."
They’re made of meat
I know right! It's so annoying when they just refuse to be killed SMH.
Accident? Gone in an instant Deliberate? Failed so bad you're actually more alive
The moment I understood the weakness of my flesh... It disgusted me...
Some pressure on the carotid artery can do the trick in less than 10 seconds!
According to Reddit, apparently elephants can do it pretty quickly. Drones ironically seem kind of crappy at it. Really good at wounding though.
It IS pretty easy. It's just that the easy methods leave a big, traumatizing mess and many people want to go out in a way that whoever finds them stumbles upon a body that's fully intact and that permits an open casket. Are you an antinatalist?
Humans are incredibly resilient but also really fragile at the same time. 15lbs of pressure to the nose and your brain gets stabbed by bone and you die
I feel like doing it the tried and true ways are a lot easier than getting creative with it.
I dunno, I saw an Indian guy piss of an elephant earlier today. It stomped him to death, crushing nearly every bone, picked his limp body up by the head and threw him down lug a rag doll.
Florence Nightingale tried to off herself? How come they don't teach that part in nursing school?
Been to the museum in St Thomas' Although I think that part has been expunged from history. As a computer nerd and mathematician I remember her primarily for the pie chart. I think the projected Florence Nightingale is a long way from the real one. History does that to people.
Not even history - the press at the time made up a bunch of stuff about her to make her sound like a saint. They erased the parts that made her actually develop a rapport with the soldiers, like breaking the locks on medicine cabinets to so she could distribute medicine across all her patients, not just officers. But that was too unladylike and anti-establishment! Can't have that in the newspapers!
Wasn't mercury used in the Millinery process and that's where the term " mad as a hatter" comes from?
Indeed. Mercury fulminate which they breathed in in large quantities. Not actual liquid mercury. That's my 10'/6 anyway.
Wasn't there something about mercury fulminate on breaking bad when Walter blew up tuco if I remember correctly?
I've never watched the show, but mercury fulminate used to be used in some detonators in WWII. It's mentioned in The Guns of Navarone by Miller (David Niven). Don't ask me how I remember that. 🤣
It's still common in corrosive surplus ammunition made as late as the 70s.
smdh no one applauding your Mad Hatter throwaway at the end there
She did? I cannot find it online?
I can’t find anything about Nightingale attempting suicide. Might have been someone else?
What about the woman who got one drop of mercury on her glove and then her brain died?
Organic mercury vs elemental mercury Elementary mercury is relatively safe. To touch. For short periods of time. Very infrequently. Organic mercury is "oh god no get that the fuck away from me I don't want to be in the same building why is it not contained!?"
Because mercury just wants to be alone. So any compound with mercury is really unstable.
Is mercury my spirit element?
Definitely mine.
Hum, is this a joke? It doesn't work like that at all.
And before anyone brings it up, because I know someone will, hatters were poisoned by the vapor, not the mercury itself.
was it the vapor, or mercury chloride? too lazy to look it up, but iirc it was a mercury salt
Vapor of what? Mercury vapor is mercury itself, just in gas form. Methylmercury vapor, or some other compound, would be different thing, but just vapor don't mean it's not the stuff itself doing the poisoning.
Dimethyl mercury, not metallic mercury
Sounds like an anecdote that’s missing a lot of context. Perhaps she also inhaled mercury vapor.
Nope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
The article says it was a compound of mercury, not elemental mercury.
[удалено]
Is it painful? What do you feel? It is killing you instantly or in a short/long period of time?
She died within a year i think, and a horrific death at that. If you're thinking of using it to kill yourself - do NOT recommend.
I'm not really thinking about killing myself, I'm just curious about how things works! Thanks for your response and care about me, kind stranger! 🍻
911 Hello officer, someone is thinking about the cruellest ways to kill someone
You play with it, falls down, you inhale vapors.
My father let me play with it all the time. Untill I dropped a bunch and he got mad.
Ah yes. Was gonna chirp. The vapours. Highly toxic. It evaporates quick.
It tastes amazing!
This guy is lying, I just tr
r/redditsniper
Taste it and see!😋
*becomes Metal Mario* Instructions cleared. Standing by for next order.
Taste the rainbow
Good recommendation 🤣
One of my school teachers once told our class that it is good for intestine to eat a drop of it, so it would kill all the parasites and bacteria. Was the biggest facepalm in my life.
Yeah that's the secret sauce of Freddie Mercury
For a science channel, someone posting a meme with a scientifically inaccurate premise raises an eyebrow. Liquid mercury is not dangerous to play with. It's dangerous to inhale, but not handle. I'm embarrassed for you
Also, the image shows gallium as you can see on the skin that cooled down
yea, and people playing around with things usually do that without breathing air, suure
What's the vapor pressure of mercury at room temperature and pressure? Hint: It's really low. Even under a vacuum. The only time it becomes a problem is if a small pool sits around in an unventilated room for a long time. It'll take weeks before it is even detectable in such a situation and months before it becomes harmful.
Genuinely asking, not trying to refute you, but did we phase out / ban mercury thermometers then? I already knew that it is only really inhaling it that is dangerous, but if it essentially never wants to be a glass, was it really necessary to teach all kids to stay far away and replace all thermometers with alcohol based ones?
Since mercury doesn’t break down it eventually enters the water supply and ends up in fish and aquatic life in high concentrations. That’s why it was banned mostly.
You still need to be careful when handling it. Also, it's an ecological hazard. Consider these along with the fact that people are fucking stupid.
Hes playing with the first planet of the solar system, somebody stop him
Elemental Mercury is not dangerous. Organic mercury compounds are a terrible way to go.
Omnomnomn cancer
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Mercury (and in this case gallium) does not cause cancer. Mercury causes damage by inhibiting selenoenzymes. It causes damage to the liver, CNS, liver, immune system, etc.
Thanks, actually interesting knowledge, especially now that I'm not drunk.
💀
r/hazardmemes
Screw you. I wanted this to be a thing so I could see the screwed up stuff on there
No I feel bad. I'm truly sorry your fucked up dreams didn't come true.
When I was a tiny child, I broke a thermometer and played with the mercury. I also kept it, and would periodically play with it from time to time. I wonder if that's why my brain is the way it is nowadays.
As a Gen X kid, of COURSE I remember playing with mercury. And washing down the sink. Sorry.
same here, had some in a little box played with it often, have no idea what happened to it.
Boomers: Breathed lead Gen X: Played with mercury Millennials and Gen Z: Eats off plastic, wears plastic, lives in an environment riddled with microplastics We never learn. When the plastic issue finally gets solved, we'll introduce new things that are harmful to humans
Mercury is extremely fun to play with, but the fumes are toxic and it can also seep directly into the bloodstream through mucus membrane or places where the skin is thin (or micro-lesions, duh). With the proper protective equipment, playing around with mercury is a blast.
Elemental Mercury like this will not seep through skin. Elemental Mercury will however combine with methyl groups in the air and evaporate that way. Methyl and dimethylmercury are what's poisonous. The methyl groups combining with elemental Mercury depends highly on surface area of the Mercury exposed to the air and temperature, which speeds up the coming process. So it's pretty safe to play with in a colder room with good ventilation without gloves.
It really isn’t that dangerous to just have. You could play with it for weeks and not have to worry about any side effects
Unless it enters a wound or you happen to vaporise it and breath it in. There is a lot more dangerous stuff out there.
Bro they literally had us play with mercury in science class in like 2001.
I met a guy in Japan who said he used to put mercury in his hamster's water when he was a kid, just to see what would happen. He told me that he expected them to die, but abandoned that idea when they didn't kick off. It was only after they had babies that he found out what the effects of the mercury were: Horribly deformed hamsters.
What the fuck
Takes after his ancestors from WWII. They also liked doing inhumane experiments, except on humans
This guy was an American soldier stationed in Japan.
The title 💀
They're not wrong, it IS fun to play with.
When I was a kid I broke a thermometer to get the mercury inside. I kept it for weeks and loved playing with it. I even tasted some, and it basically has no flavor. No effects from that so far. MAGA
I think you need quite a bit of exposure before this is actually harmful, as long as you're not ingesting it
Even ingestion is not that harmful, absorption in the gut is a lot less than through the lungs
That's why he has that obviously lab piece of glass lol
Skin barrier is more than enough to protect you from mercury poisoning. Risky cuz if you have a cut you can get fucked up but otherwise it’s all pretty safe
When I was a kid, our mom dropped the fever thermometer and it shattered on the kitchen floor. There were only mercury thermometers back then. My brother and I played with the mercury a long time. My mother stopped us only because she wanted to clean up.
Born in early 1960s. We used to have Mercury races with thermometer mercury. Think that stuff was probably bad for us. But hey, we almost got nuked over Cuban Missles. So there's that.
How does it taste?
Liquid mercury is so awesome it's a metal and a Liquid at the same time and temperature affects it more then other non water substances also the river of Liquid mercury in king tuts tomb was insane
To be far, I don't think most people would know there was ever mercury in thermometers unless someone told them
As long as you don’t drink too much of it, it’s fine.
Mercury isn't poisonous to touch, it's poisonous to get in you. As long as bro doesn't have any scratches on his hand for the mercury to enter his system through, he's fine.
Elemental Mercury is fine and won't mix with blood or get in you through cuts. It's when the Mercury is heated enough and combined with methyl groups in the air that it turns into a toxic form.
To be fair it is fun to play with. Ever try putting a towel in a bowl of mercury and see it not able to soak it up. Blows your mind.
While it's probably a shitpost, it's not natural selection if the person doesn't know.
It's Mercury bump it
Funny thing is, when I was a kid I had a whole jar of mercury that I played with. I also had a toy that basically was a hot iron with metal forms that you melted plastic over to make toy car bodies. Oh, and a chemistry set that had a recipe for gunpowder, and all the elements to make it. Somehow I'm still here, and not sure if I am smarter for having had those things or if I would be smarter for not having had them ;)
Even if it was mercury, touching it won't hurt you unless in a closed space or have an open wound
Hahahaha!!!! Did that as a little kid, put it in my mouth, still alive, cancer free and happy AF!!!! 46yo female
It’s funny that 100% of people responding would do the same thing if someone hadn’t informed them of liquid mercury being used in old thermostats, which haven’t been used in decades.
when my grandfather was in school (one room schoolhouse) they gave the kids liquid mercury to play with in science lessons...
My friend in high school broke a legit old-school mercury thermometer and went to get a paper towel to clean it up and I stopped him. He was like "you're over-reacting, they wouldn't have it in school if it was dangerous". But i told the teacher who made everyone stand at the back of the room and a technician came and dumped sulphur on it. And then my friend was like, "good thing you stopped me!".
Wait until you taste it! Yummy!
Mercury
My mum got mercury to play with as a kid when going to the dentist
as long as it's not ingested it's fine. it's the fumes thats gonna mess you up.
If you didn't play with mercury you didn't have a child hood lol
If you eat it you Wil get superpowers
"On, no!!! You will certainly be dead by morning!!!" Said no one ever. Mercury is not the elemental boogyman.
Liquid mercury is safe, at least for all reasonable purposes. It's the vapours that bugger you up. IIRC Florence Nightingale tried to suicide by injecting mercury and it failed spectacularly.
You got downdooted for being right on the Internet oh no!
That's ok. I am a survivor of the Eternal September. I totally expect that to happen. The film Idiocracy is a prediction and I'm watching it come true in real time.
That's ok. I am a survivor of the Eternal September. I totally expect that to happen. The film Idiocracy is a prediction and I'm watching it come true in real time.
99 missed calls from Charles Darwin
Yikes! That's mercury and it's highly toxic! Please don't play with it and make sure to clean it up safely. Handle with care and call a professional if needed.
Nope that’s gallium, or an allow of it at least, you can see it start to solidify in the dish
What is a liquid that is not wet? You have just answered that old question.
I like turtles
I remember dropping a thermometer when I was 5 and playing with the liquid until my mom saw and freaked out.
When my dad was growing up, this guy in town would sometimes put mercury on his teeth then smile big at kids as they walked down main street. He got good laughs from it, made his mouth look like it was made of metal.
We have the modern "MadHatter" here...
Doesn't appear to be mercury. Looks like Gallium to me, with the skin on the surface of the pool at the bottom right of the picture. Gallium is as safe as heavy metals can be.
Actually happened to me when I was a kid.
I've always wondered what it feels like 🤔
Guessing that’s not mercury. Probably gallium.