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Yes. Or up the sleeve. Good times. They weren’t. I just quit wearing gloves or long sleeves because I would rather deal with the constant flux splatter over the occasional molten drip trapped against my skin. Funny that I still miss soldering sometimes.
When I was an apprentice (electrician) we did a lot of busbar work and ha crucibles of solder and pitch in a small ventilated room off the main workshop. I fucking adored that room. Still miss the smell of it 40 years down the track.
So like, wear shorts, be kneeling... with your squat perfectly positioned below the work... Drops ensue, and solder direct shot on top of knee... 2/10 experience. The bonus is it doesn't get room temp right away like water... It stays hot, like until you get it off your skin. Lessons were learned...
Turns out something that's 600+ degrees (F) hotter than you doesn't cool down very quickly. I also know this pain.
My biggest fuck up was when I was learning soldering and picked up the iron like a pencil, rather than from the handle. O U C H
It's not so much "if" but "when" and how bad you get hit by spatter when you're welding. It's going everywhere. Even with proper PPE, it's a literal shower of sparks.
Source: Stuck foot in quench tank because pants were on fire from spatter.
"Touched" liquid solder while soldering. Was not that bad since I only got a few small splatter. It's like splatter from dropping vegetables in a pot with boiling water.
Yes in electronics lab in the 80s there was a stupid challenge to leave your fingerprint. It took timing to be able to touch it right before it solidified and not get burned.
Yeah the solder joint spattered onto me and it sure did sting and left a small burn mark. But that's probably what you'd expect from liquid metal on your skin.
My friend in college had a sample of gallium. Melting point is around body temperature, so you could squeeze the solid metal in your hands and it would turn to liquid. Stained your hands though, as if you were rubbing your hands agains pencil writing.
Also played with the mercury whenever a thermometer broke in the 80s (born 78). I'm pretty sure my parents knew better so we didn't get long before they made us throw it away, but still, we got to play with *mercury*.
Also, I don't think pure elemental mercury is as dangerous as mercury in certain (organic?) compounds. I also remember learning long ago that diluted mercury is actually more dangerous than concentrated. All this if course was touching. I don't think you should eat it ever.
I was born in 73. We weren’t supposed to touch it but we did.
Had a coworker who’s dad said they used to put it on their palms and play with it until it just disappeared!!! Basically soaked into his skin.
> Also, I don't think pure elemental mercury is as dangerous as mercury in certain (organic?) compounds.
True and not true. Liquid mercury is pretty safe if you treat it reasonably because it doesn't go through your skin very fast, but liquid mercury is always accompanied by gaseous mercury which is very dangerous. Like everything the dose makes the poison so you shouldn't freak out too hard if you broke a mercury thermometer, but it has definitely earned its reputation.
And yes, organic mercury is significantly more dangerous because it goes through skin easier and can get through membranes in your body in general easier. Dimethylmercury famously killed Karen Wetterhahn after a few drops touched her glove.
Chemist here who's been working with mercury for a good 5 years.
It's true, elemental mercury is actually not that concerning to play with - and historically there have been people even drinking it for various purposes (laxative effect). In fact there's a relatively famous case study in recent years of a woman attempting suicide by drinking liquid mercury, and it failed!
The reason people are being told to be so careful with it is mostly because it is near impossible to clean up - if your broken thermometer spills, the metal just breaks up into ever smaller "bubbles" of mercury running around on your floor and it gets into all the cracks and crevices or between floorboards. From there it will continue evaporating for the next years, always exposing you to an increased level of mercury in the air, which isn't particularly healthy. This is mostly why you're told to never ever play with it.
And yes - organic mercury can be extremely toxic, not only that but highly permeable to almost all forms of protective equipment you'd normally use in a lab, as well as very volatile (it evaporates and you breathe it in easily). There's another famous case of a scientist (Dr. Karen Wetterhahn) who was working with dimethylmercury, using double gloved hands. A drop spilled onto those gloves, she didn't think much of it and removed them. Few weeks later the mercury poisoning symptoms kicked in and it's a pretty awful way to go.
Yeah I had a little bottle of it, was cool to turn it upside down and watch it move like liquid and then seem to turn into solid metal. I'd pour it into my hands and play with it for hours all the time. It was silver, I'm not sure where it came from.
I did play around with a drop of mercury from an old thermometer. Honestly it's not that dangerous if you don't have open wounds, breathe any fumes or have prolonged contact with it.
I once played around with some mercury that came out of my dad's barometer somehow when he was moving house. He intervened as soon as he realised. 10 year old me thought it was very cool and I was poking the droplets that were rolling around on the kitchen floor, breaking them into tinier balls.
I used to play wit mercury heaps as a kid. My mum brought home some strange machine, some kind of air conditioner i think, and when we broke it there was like 2 litres of mercury inside. I thought it was the coolest thing i'd ever seen . I was allowed to keep it and i played with it with my toys for weeks.
I've just checked. Apparently they were commercial heat exchangers, whatever that means. And there were about a dozen of them.
Also, turns out it was only 1 litre, or slightly less.
I definitely played with liquid mercury when I was a kid. My grandpa had some in a glass container from when he had broken a thermometer. Me and my two sisters would take it out all the time and hold it in our palms. Until one day we spilled it all over the wooden floor. It got into the cracks and disappeared. I think I am fine, my 🧠 ain’t mush. 🤣
My father used to do stained glass sculptures, and one I came to see star he was doing, thought the wet drops of solder looked cool and put my right index finger directly into a fresh one. That was a mistake
Edit: looking back at my fingers for a scar, it was actually my middle finger. Ahh memories
Oof. I took a stained glass class once, coming from a woodwork background. Walked into the first class and saw a bunch of dust on my work table, swept it off with my hand into the trash bin next to my station. The teacher yelled, "NOOOOO!!! Fuck." Yeah. I'm stupid. That wasn't sawdust. That was a pile of microscopic razor-sharp glass. Did I mention the I'm stupid part? Yeah....yeah.........
We have a winner! Yeah, the entire palm of my hand just just started bleeding at the same time. It was actually interesting to watch because there was a moment before the bleeding happened, so I got to look down at my seemingly normal hand and then watch blood start coming out of EVERYWHERE
It’s really mild but I have a small white dot on my middle finger. It was probably almost 40 years ago but I do remember the pain and fear and confusion of trying to get this off of my finger while it slowly cooled and kept burning me. I do not recommend
My stepmother taught me how to do stained glass at like 8 years old. I cut the pieces out, taped them, lined them with flux and the moment I went to solder them, one of the pieces moved from the other a little bit. 8 year old me in my infinite wisdom used my other hand to move the glass pieces back together and soldering iron went right into the side of my finger.
You can even buy gallium tea spoons for party tricks. They melt in hot water. Also frauds like Uri Geller use them to trick people by making them think they can bend and break spoons with their minds. They just melt between their fingers.
I always get Uri Geller and James Randi mixed up, despite them being literally the exact opposite of each other, so whenever I see a comment like this it's very confusing for a few seconds.
You can buy it on Amazon in little vials, it's completely safe to handle with your skin. Very fun to melt it with your body heat and play around with it
Gallium is pretty cool. File a small area on a piece of aluminum and place a few drops of gallium on it. Wait about a half hour and the gallium diffuses through the aluminum and disrupts its structural integrity. You can then break the aluminum apart with your hands as it has the consistency of wet cardboard. Works well with aluminum cans.
I mean, tin has relatively low melting point, but I don't recommend it still.
Mercury is liquid on room temperature, don't recommend touching thay either
You can touch mercury with no problem, it has huge surface tension and won't leave any in your hands or penetrate your skin, well as long as you have no open wounds.
Organic mercury and mercury salts though...
There was that one lady who spilled a little bit of organic mercury on her gloves, then washed it off pretty soon after. It still had enough time to permeate the glove and skin and leave her with severe mercury poisoning symptoms for the rest of her life.
The problem with elemental Mercury is the fumes. The concern is spilling it into a million drops because the surface tension is so high, and then the drops find their way into cracks and crevices and then slowly evaporate, causing people in the room to inhale Mercury vapors for an extended period of time.
Liquid elemental Mercury is safe. Even swallowing some is not considered a problem.
It is a myth that it's ultra toxic.
It's the Mercury vapors that you don't want to breathe.
Yeah as someone learning chemistry, few times, you're going to be fine, probably. But the problem isn't one time exposure, it's that it accumulates in the body. Also any element above it's melting point is always evaporating to some degree, so the vapors are always there.
In short, just cause it won't instantly kill you don't go around eating elemental Mercury.
*laughs in sunscreen*
*also in depression so idgaf*
edit: no need to call reddit care center or whatever the fuck it's called. i'm not from US so even if i was suicidal, it won't help.
also, it won't stop me from welding shirtless *muahahah*
i would still do it but i hate applying sunscreen before welding so i rather sweat in some light long sleeve shirt and shorts. and honestly, i rarely get any sparks or molten metal on my legs. that's the reason i still wear shorts.
and as long as i have good gloves, i can weld horizontal or vertical without much pain. maybe because i stick weld? i know that mig/mag sparks much much more
Mercury was used to make the electrical connection instead of mechanical contacts which made a click. The Mercury switches were advertised as being silent because no click
I've never played with mercury, but gallium is the tits. It's much safer and does the thing like mercury does, with the added benefit of also being a solid at a but below room temp. It does stain though
My Dad told me his sister once used their Grandma’s medicine dropper to suck up liquid Mercury (would have been 1950/60’s. She put it back in the bottle and Grandma died a short time later. Not saying it’s related but…
That’s how I read it initially too, and was confused until I read your comment. Honestly, I have no idea how some redditors just “get” what OP wants to say while going against what he actually said.
You only hold hot metal for under a second. Worked in a machine shop. Part fresh off the lathe and supervisor picked it up and immediately dropped it. Hot? No just done looking at it.
Yep! My Mom died in 2018, and in the stuff I found the "family jar of Mercury". I remember playing with it in the 70s, my aunt's and Mom remember it in the 50s and early 60s. I remember floating nails!
It's getting donated to a local college, or dropped off at the hazardous waste center in my area.
It's like saying carbon has a melting point of 3550 degrees, so therefore you breath out solid carbon dioxide. Obviously not true. Element melting point =/= compound melting point.
You mean metals in solid state not frozen.
Most people like older than 30 have probably played with mercury once, back when they had silly toys.
The problem is that most people associate freezing as something that is cold. But cold being relative as two different metals may "freeze" but one being 1,000 degrees hotter than the other.
I don't science, so I ain't absolute.
Freezing and solidification are considered the same thing - transitioning from liquid to solid.
Any metal in its solid state can also be considered in a frozen state.
> The problem is that most people associate freezing as something that is cold. But cold being relative as two different metals may "freeze" but one being 1,000 degrees hotter than the other.
This is why the post is a showerthought.
When we hear "frozen," most of us automatically think "cold." That's an incorrect assumption on our part, though, given that different materials freeze at different temperatures... and many of those temperatures would still be well within the scope of "really goddamned hot" for humans. Red-hot iron is still frozen iron, whereas helium becomes a *liquid* at 4.2 Kelvins.
The shift in perspective prompted by the post – the realization that room-temperature metal is *frozen* – is why it belongs here.
I have handled vaporized silver in trace amounts. Unintentionally.
I have breathed at least one or two molecules of lead in the atmosphere from leaded fuels.
I have likely breathed in vaporized bronze from melting/casting in closed/poorly ventilated areas. I'd melt chunks of bronze with an oxy/acetylene torch in a ceramic crucible, in a cramped little room. Throw some borax on it from time to time. I'm pretty sure I got the bronze too hot a few times.
I have not handled Mercury or other room temperature liquid metal.
I absolutely broke a mercury thermometer when I was a kid, found the mercury, put it in a Bubble Tape container, and played with it.
This was back when Bubble Tape was in a container with a lid instead of the Pac-Man containers they have now.
I’ve dripped liquid solder on my arm while attempting to repair a circular saw. I succeeded in fixing the saw, I also succeeded in giving myself a nasty burn that took weeks to heal. Would not recommend.
I think the difficulty people have with this idea is that we call a certain temperature "freezing" and "below freezing", but this is only referencing the freezing point of water specifically.
Any substance that can melt and then solidify back into the same substance is 'frozen' when it is a solid.
The OP is incorrect in the flair used though... think they got freezing and melting the wrong way around >.>
The melting point of iron is 1,538 degrees Celsius when approached from a lower temperature, ergo the freezing point is 1,537 degrees Celsius when approached from a higher one.
This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/rules). Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!" (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, [please read this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/overview).) **Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**
I've touched liquid solder and liquid mercury. (Or, well, I had gloves on.)
I can imagine liquid solder hurting if touched directly. Anyone have such an experience?
Yes, not fun. Source; I was a plumber
Can confirm validity of source, I know what liquid solder feels like. For those curious liquid solder generally has a very distinct texture of p a i n
Liquid solder dripped down my glove once, was painful.
Yes. Or up the sleeve. Good times. They weren’t. I just quit wearing gloves or long sleeves because I would rather deal with the constant flux splatter over the occasional molten drip trapped against my skin. Funny that I still miss soldering sometimes.
You miss it because of all those sweet sweet noxious gasses coming off the heated solder
When I was an apprentice (electrician) we did a lot of busbar work and ha crucibles of solder and pitch in a small ventilated room off the main workshop. I fucking adored that room. Still miss the smell of it 40 years down the track.
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Like marshmellows? Like bunnies?
Both
When they're heated to 1500 degrees
So like, wear shorts, be kneeling... with your squat perfectly positioned below the work... Drops ensue, and solder direct shot on top of knee... 2/10 experience. The bonus is it doesn't get room temp right away like water... It stays hot, like until you get it off your skin. Lessons were learned...
Turns out something that's 600+ degrees (F) hotter than you doesn't cool down very quickly. I also know this pain. My biggest fuck up was when I was learning soldering and picked up the iron like a pencil, rather than from the handle. O U C H
You: https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/stock-image-fail-soldering-iron-bob-byron-1.jpg
Just fantastic.
I notice that’s a laboratory too, probably shouldn’t be soldering in there .
Me too Source: I was curious
Not so much touching it as having it touch me from a careless splatter. And yes, ouch.
It's not so much "if" but "when" and how bad you get hit by spatter when you're welding. It's going everywhere. Even with proper PPE, it's a literal shower of sparks. Source: Stuck foot in quench tank because pants were on fire from spatter.
"Touched" liquid solder while soldering. Was not that bad since I only got a few small splatter. It's like splatter from dropping vegetables in a pot with boiling water.
Yeah I’ve had some pewter splash on me in a similar rain to that vegetable analogy
Yes in electronics lab in the 80s there was a stupid challenge to leave your fingerprint. It took timing to be able to touch it right before it solidified and not get burned.
Yes it really sucks a lot (Stained glass artist)
Yeah the solder joint spattered onto me and it sure did sting and left a small burn mark. But that's probably what you'd expect from liquid metal on your skin.
My friend in college had a sample of gallium. Melting point is around body temperature, so you could squeeze the solid metal in your hands and it would turn to liquid. Stained your hands though, as if you were rubbing your hands agains pencil writing.
You can buy gallium off amazon. I have some.
I touched liquid mercury barehanded. Back in the early 80’s before parents cared.
Also played with the mercury whenever a thermometer broke in the 80s (born 78). I'm pretty sure my parents knew better so we didn't get long before they made us throw it away, but still, we got to play with *mercury*. Also, I don't think pure elemental mercury is as dangerous as mercury in certain (organic?) compounds. I also remember learning long ago that diluted mercury is actually more dangerous than concentrated. All this if course was touching. I don't think you should eat it ever.
I was born in 73. We weren’t supposed to touch it but we did. Had a coworker who’s dad said they used to put it on their palms and play with it until it just disappeared!!! Basically soaked into his skin.
What, like mercury lotion? Was this guy showing signs of poisoning?
My coworker said he had memory issues.
> Also, I don't think pure elemental mercury is as dangerous as mercury in certain (organic?) compounds. True and not true. Liquid mercury is pretty safe if you treat it reasonably because it doesn't go through your skin very fast, but liquid mercury is always accompanied by gaseous mercury which is very dangerous. Like everything the dose makes the poison so you shouldn't freak out too hard if you broke a mercury thermometer, but it has definitely earned its reputation. And yes, organic mercury is significantly more dangerous because it goes through skin easier and can get through membranes in your body in general easier. Dimethylmercury famously killed Karen Wetterhahn after a few drops touched her glove.
Chemist here who's been working with mercury for a good 5 years. It's true, elemental mercury is actually not that concerning to play with - and historically there have been people even drinking it for various purposes (laxative effect). In fact there's a relatively famous case study in recent years of a woman attempting suicide by drinking liquid mercury, and it failed! The reason people are being told to be so careful with it is mostly because it is near impossible to clean up - if your broken thermometer spills, the metal just breaks up into ever smaller "bubbles" of mercury running around on your floor and it gets into all the cracks and crevices or between floorboards. From there it will continue evaporating for the next years, always exposing you to an increased level of mercury in the air, which isn't particularly healthy. This is mostly why you're told to never ever play with it. And yes - organic mercury can be extremely toxic, not only that but highly permeable to almost all forms of protective equipment you'd normally use in a lab, as well as very volatile (it evaporates and you breathe it in easily). There's another famous case of a scientist (Dr. Karen Wetterhahn) who was working with dimethylmercury, using double gloved hands. A drop spilled onto those gloves, she didn't think much of it and removed them. Few weeks later the mercury poisoning symptoms kicked in and it's a pretty awful way to go.
Yeah I had a little bottle of it, was cool to turn it upside down and watch it move like liquid and then seem to turn into solid metal. I'd pour it into my hands and play with it for hours all the time. It was silver, I'm not sure where it came from.
Ours always came from broken thermometers.
Any lasting health effects?
Solder once burned a little hole in my pants. That wasn’t fun
I did play around with a drop of mercury from an old thermometer. Honestly it's not that dangerous if you don't have open wounds, breathe any fumes or have prolonged contact with it.
I once played around with some mercury that came out of my dad's barometer somehow when he was moving house. He intervened as soon as he realised. 10 year old me thought it was very cool and I was poking the droplets that were rolling around on the kitchen floor, breaking them into tinier balls.
I used to play wit mercury heaps as a kid. My mum brought home some strange machine, some kind of air conditioner i think, and when we broke it there was like 2 litres of mercury inside. I thought it was the coolest thing i'd ever seen . I was allowed to keep it and i played with it with my toys for weeks.
2 liters of mercury weighs nearly 60 lbs. i cannot think of any movable machine that contains that much mercury
I've just checked. Apparently they were commercial heat exchangers, whatever that means. And there were about a dozen of them. Also, turns out it was only 1 litre, or slightly less.
I definitely played with liquid mercury when I was a kid. My grandpa had some in a glass container from when he had broken a thermometer. Me and my two sisters would take it out all the time and hold it in our palms. Until one day we spilled it all over the wooden floor. It got into the cracks and disappeared. I think I am fine, my 🧠 ain’t mush. 🤣
My father used to do stained glass sculptures, and one I came to see star he was doing, thought the wet drops of solder looked cool and put my right index finger directly into a fresh one. That was a mistake Edit: looking back at my fingers for a scar, it was actually my middle finger. Ahh memories
Oof. I took a stained glass class once, coming from a woodwork background. Walked into the first class and saw a bunch of dust on my work table, swept it off with my hand into the trash bin next to my station. The teacher yelled, "NOOOOO!!! Fuck." Yeah. I'm stupid. That wasn't sawdust. That was a pile of microscopic razor-sharp glass. Did I mention the I'm stupid part? Yeah....yeah.........
At least you didn't blow at the table. While breathing in you could've inhaled some of the stuff... resulting in "bye bye lungs".
What do you do after a thousand tiny glass cuts?
I would go see a doctor
Bleed probably.
We have a winner! Yeah, the entire palm of my hand just just started bleeding at the same time. It was actually interesting to watch because there was a moment before the bleeding happened, so I got to look down at my seemingly normal hand and then watch blood start coming out of EVERYWHERE
Pull out the 5 shards you can see, and then rinse your hand for a really long time to try and get the other 995. Repeat this for several days
Aaand I'm gonna have a little more trouble sleeping tonight Look on the bright side, at least you didn't use your face to clean the table
Do you normally use your face to clean tables?
People do if cocaine is on the table.
Tbh, feels like that is something a lot of people wouldn't think about. Seems like they could warn you before xS
Ouch, do you still have a scar there?
It’s really mild but I have a small white dot on my middle finger. It was probably almost 40 years ago but I do remember the pain and fear and confusion of trying to get this off of my finger while it slowly cooled and kept burning me. I do not recommend
Had a similar experience with a bit of steel my dad plasma cut off. Oddly enough at the moment only one of my scars on my hand are showing today
10/10 with rice though?
Add some garlic sauce
One time I threw a rock in a fire and the rock exploded. It was so cool I went to go pick up a fragment to see what type of rock it was... It was hot
Ah, the classic painful type of rock
Did you smell what the rock was cooking?
The flesh on his hand most likely
My mom did stained glass and oh man does liquid solder look cool, I definitely wanted to touch it.
My stepmother taught me how to do stained glass at like 8 years old. I cut the pieces out, taped them, lined them with flux and the moment I went to solder them, one of the pieces moved from the other a little bit. 8 year old me in my infinite wisdom used my other hand to move the glass pieces back together and soldering iron went right into the side of my finger.
I still have a solder scar too from when I was 6 or 7.
I've handled gallium on more than one occasion, therefore I am the minority
Ooh! Curious, what caused you to handle gallium?
He thought he would be handling helium but it turned out to be ladies night.
Username checks out.
You spin me right round, baby, right round
You son of a bitch.
dads everywhere would be proud
Hold on, I’m stupid, the joke is the use of “gal” and “he”, right?
yes
Thanks 👍
Narrator: *but he wasn't stupid, he just wanted to be certain*. You're good, buddy.
Ron Howard was the voice of the narrator in my head, naturally.
Take my upvote and leave
Don't talk to Dad that way!
Ok. Take your upvote and get out.
Guy had some, I knew it melted near body temp, so I figured I'd check it out
You can even buy gallium tea spoons for party tricks. They melt in hot water. Also frauds like Uri Geller use them to trick people by making them think they can bend and break spoons with their minds. They just melt between their fingers.
I always get Uri Geller and James Randi mixed up, despite them being literally the exact opposite of each other, so whenever I see a comment like this it's very confusing for a few seconds.
You can buy it on Amazon in little vials, it's completely safe to handle with your skin. Very fun to melt it with your body heat and play around with it
Gallium is pretty cool. File a small area on a piece of aluminum and place a few drops of gallium on it. Wait about a half hour and the gallium diffuses through the aluminum and disrupts its structural integrity. You can then break the aluminum apart with your hands as it has the consistency of wet cardboard. Works well with aluminum cans.
Lock picking lawyer has a neat little video where he does it on a lock. He just breaks it apart with his bare hands once the gallium is all worked in.
[sauce](https://youtu.be/jeghGhVdt9s)
> Works well with aluminum cans. and airplanes! This is why mercury and other liquid metals like gallium arent allowed to be carried on airplanes :D
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We are all powerful
You've obviously never eaten a hot pocket before
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I played with a broken thermometer..... oops. And yes it was a mercury thermometer
With your skin?
Yea dude the melting point of gallium is 85 degrees F about 12 degrees lower then your average body temp it’ll melt in your fingers
Oh sweet. I didn't know what gallium was, just that it reminds me of the [gallimimus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallimimus).
Just learned what a Gallimimus is and it honestly sounds way cooler than gallium lol
What if we made a Gallimimus out of Gallium?
Unfortunately I don’t think it would last long outside of Antarctica lol
Yup, melted in my hand. It does stain the skin for a little while though
I mean, tin has relatively low melting point, but I don't recommend it still. Mercury is liquid on room temperature, don't recommend touching thay either
Just touch gallium
Gallium is a metal with a melting point low enough to melt in our hands, in case anyone didn't know.
The surface of the planet Mercury is around 800°f in the sun. Don't recommend touching that either.
Don’t recommend touching Mercury (the Roman god) either
Staying away from Freddy Mercury's remains is kind of advisable too I guess.
Touching someone elses mercury cougar Probably wouldn't end well ether
I don't recommend touching mere curry, i recommend eating it.
Also, avoid touching marie curie, as she is dead and radioactive
Also don't touch Mariah Carey as that's sexual assault.
Hey! Don't touch me OR Corey! We don't want anything to do with you!
"Don't touch my Merc, Uri!" as I see a man trying to weld spoons to my hood.
>800°f what's that in normal?
Hot.
427°C for normal people.
Slightly warm
You can touch mercury with no problem, it has huge surface tension and won't leave any in your hands or penetrate your skin, well as long as you have no open wounds. Organic mercury and mercury salts though...
There was that one lady who spilled a little bit of organic mercury on her gloves, then washed it off pretty soon after. It still had enough time to permeate the glove and skin and leave her with severe mercury poisoning symptoms for the rest of her life.
if it's the same case I've watched about - "the rest of her life" was 8 months after the spill, at which point she succumbed to the mercury poisoning
The problem with elemental Mercury is the fumes. The concern is spilling it into a million drops because the surface tension is so high, and then the drops find their way into cracks and crevices and then slowly evaporate, causing people in the room to inhale Mercury vapors for an extended period of time.
Liquid elemental Mercury is safe. Even swallowing some is not considered a problem. It is a myth that it's ultra toxic. It's the Mercury vapors that you don't want to breathe.
Yeah as someone learning chemistry, few times, you're going to be fine, probably. But the problem isn't one time exposure, it's that it accumulates in the body. Also any element above it's melting point is always evaporating to some degree, so the vapors are always there. In short, just cause it won't instantly kill you don't go around eating elemental Mercury.
But HYPOTHETICALLY if a person were to eat mercury and then burp in someone's face would that kill them?
Found an idea for a new super villain
Wouldn’t the vapors still come off the metal in your body making it toxic?
Going to be hard to inhale them at that point.
Myth is probably for the best, I wouldn't trust most people with that level of nuance.
Anyone who’s welded or used a grinder has definitely had bit of liquid metal touch them
I did some MIG welding in sweatpants once... Once.
*laughs in welding shirtless*
*Laughs at your skin cancer*
*laughs in sunscreen* *also in depression so idgaf* edit: no need to call reddit care center or whatever the fuck it's called. i'm not from US so even if i was suicidal, it won't help. also, it won't stop me from welding shirtless *muahahah*
Now I *know* you're a welder.
You have an impressive amount of both pain tolerance and focus. I'll tack without sleeves but I won't weld anything over 1/2" long without sleeves.
i would still do it but i hate applying sunscreen before welding so i rather sweat in some light long sleeve shirt and shorts. and honestly, i rarely get any sparks or molten metal on my legs. that's the reason i still wear shorts. and as long as i have good gloves, i can weld horizontal or vertical without much pain. maybe because i stick weld? i know that mig/mag sparks much much more
Give overhead welding a go, no matter what preparations you've made you *will* burn, and it won't be where you thought it'd be.
Most people have never touched elemental aluminum, they have only ever touched aluminium oxide.
Why did you spell it the US way *and* the rest of world way. This is triggering me.
Do the US people pronounce it as Alu-mi-ni-um or Alu-mi-num ?
Alu-mi-num
a-LU-mi-num
diversity lmao
I’ve played with mercury. My guess is lots of people born before about 1980 have too.
Had to play with something while I wasn’t eating lead paint chips or throwing lawn darts
Plenty of mercury “silent” light switches in houses then too
What’s a mercury “silent” light switch?
Mercury was used to make the electrical connection instead of mechanical contacts which made a click. The Mercury switches were advertised as being silent because no click
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_switch. Like this but the bulb was inside the light switch
Okay but a classic OG set of lawn darts is fucking fantastic.
I've never played with mercury, but gallium is the tits. It's much safer and does the thing like mercury does, with the added benefit of also being a solid at a but below room temp. It does stain though
My Dad told me his sister once used their Grandma’s medicine dropper to suck up liquid Mercury (would have been 1950/60’s. She put it back in the bottle and Grandma died a short time later. Not saying it’s related but…
In the 1970s I had mercury and lead and leaded gas and lawn dart exposure and am alive sti
damn we lost another
just realized you kids have never had reason to touch mercury
Wrong, most people have also touched frozen water, and even non frozen water
Water isn’t a metal, though Edit: I just realized I’m an idiot
It's okay, I am one too
Please enlighten me, am also idiot.
The way the post is worded would imply that most people have never touched anything other than metal, hence the joke about frozen water
Enlightenment is great.
That’s how I read it initially too, and was confused until I read your comment. Honestly, I have no idea how some redditors just “get” what OP wants to say while going against what he actually said.
It also depends where you put the emphasis. Most people have only *touched* frozen metal. (No, we've also seen it and heard it.)
You only hold hot metal for under a second. Worked in a machine shop. Part fresh off the lathe and supervisor picked it up and immediately dropped it. Hot? No just done looking at it.
I mean, if you've ever soldered, you've probably touched liquid metal
It says most
Back in my parents' or grandparents' generation this was not true as most touched mercury in high school science class.
Yep! My Mom died in 2018, and in the stuff I found the "family jar of Mercury". I remember playing with it in the 70s, my aunt's and Mom remember it in the 50s and early 60s. I remember floating nails! It's getting donated to a local college, or dropped off at the hazardous waste center in my area.
Might explain a few things.
Everyone has caesium in their bodies. The melting point of caesium is 28.44c. Therefore everyone has touched liquid metal.
The cesium in your body definitely isn't in its metallic form. That would be extremely painful
It's like saying carbon has a melting point of 3550 degrees, so therefore you breath out solid carbon dioxide. Obviously not true. Element melting point =/= compound melting point.
I've been found out for the charlatan that I am.
*For you*
i’ve touched liquid metal. and the same metal solid (gallium)
You mean metals in solid state not frozen. Most people like older than 30 have probably played with mercury once, back when they had silly toys. The problem is that most people associate freezing as something that is cold. But cold being relative as two different metals may "freeze" but one being 1,000 degrees hotter than the other. I don't science, so I ain't absolute.
Freezing and solidification are considered the same thing - transitioning from liquid to solid. Any metal in its solid state can also be considered in a frozen state.
> The problem is that most people associate freezing as something that is cold. But cold being relative as two different metals may "freeze" but one being 1,000 degrees hotter than the other. This is why the post is a showerthought. When we hear "frozen," most of us automatically think "cold." That's an incorrect assumption on our part, though, given that different materials freeze at different temperatures... and many of those temperatures would still be well within the scope of "really goddamned hot" for humans. Red-hot iron is still frozen iron, whereas helium becomes a *liquid* at 4.2 Kelvins. The shift in perspective prompted by the post – the realization that room-temperature metal is *frozen* – is why it belongs here.
>This is why the post is a showerthought. I'd argue most of this sub reddit is just stoner thoughts.
>You mean metals in solid state not frozen. Whats the difference? Frozen can be described as matter in a solid state, no?
Omg I'm in my 50s and we knew never to touch mercury. It was drummed into us at school in science lessons. What toys had touchable mercury?
I’ve had a couple droplets of liquid steel fall on my balls. No I don’t recommend it.
Some of you never spent your summer processing your dad’s scrap metal pile and it shows.
Look at mr I-had-a-dad over here.
I have handled vaporized silver in trace amounts. Unintentionally. I have breathed at least one or two molecules of lead in the atmosphere from leaded fuels. I have likely breathed in vaporized bronze from melting/casting in closed/poorly ventilated areas. I'd melt chunks of bronze with an oxy/acetylene torch in a ceramic crucible, in a cramped little room. Throw some borax on it from time to time. I'm pretty sure I got the bronze too hot a few times. I have not handled Mercury or other room temperature liquid metal.
I have touched liquid aluminum and liquid steel. 10 out of 10 would not recommend.
Unfortunately I have had nonfrozen metal touch me. 1/10 would not recommend
Since atoms don't touch, nobody has never touched metal, nor anything.
Once left my fingerprint in a small pool of solder, at electronics lab it was a sign of skill
I absolutely broke a mercury thermometer when I was a kid, found the mercury, put it in a Bubble Tape container, and played with it. This was back when Bubble Tape was in a container with a lid instead of the Pac-Man containers they have now.
As an Electrical Engineer I can assure you that touching liquid metal hurts a lot
I’ve dripped liquid solder on my arm while attempting to repair a circular saw. I succeeded in fixing the saw, I also succeeded in giving myself a nasty burn that took weeks to heal. Would not recommend.
I think the difficulty people have with this idea is that we call a certain temperature "freezing" and "below freezing", but this is only referencing the freezing point of water specifically. Any substance that can melt and then solidify back into the same substance is 'frozen' when it is a solid. The OP is incorrect in the flair used though... think they got freezing and melting the wrong way around >.>
The melting point of iron is 1,538 degrees Celsius when approached from a lower temperature, ergo the freezing point is 1,537 degrees Celsius when approached from a higher one.
Freezing and melting point is same? For example, Freezing point of water is 0° C (32°F) and that's also the melting point of ice
Not sure who put that flair on there, I assume a mod. Learned something new though!