More beautiful than expected! The vapor pressure of mercury at room temp is in the range of 10^-6 atm so I wouldn't expect any mercury to have visibly gone into the trap. I think the remaining mercury was shiny because the mercurous oxide decomposes at a fairly low temperature. Also can you tell me why you didn't distill to completion? I know in normal distillations with water, but I cant think of any contaminants that would cross over here. My distillation apparatus is steel and I cannot see inside so I always heat it until the temperature rises above the boiling point of mercury, at which point I know its done. Should I not do that?
Most of us played with as a kid in school. Elemental mercury is not likely to do much unless you have wounds and even then it is not as risky as folks scream about. There are compounds of mercury that will kill the shit out of you with even one drop on your hand. Not elemental mercury though. The danger comes from water soluble compounds and ones with an attached methyl group, compounds like mercuric chloride or the massively scary dimethylmercury. Though breathing any metal fumes to include mercury is super bad juju.
It's actually really interesting. I make sweet tea a lot (I'm from the south) and to make the tea, I always heat up water in the microwave to boiling. I usually use old glass measuring cup, but we got some brand new pyrex stuff. I put it in the microwave, and it wasn't boiling, so I put it in the microwave longer, and it still wasn't boiling, so I took it out, and the shock of it hitting the counter caused it to boil violently. The reason is, is that there was nowhere for bubbles to start to form on the new glass.
mercury vapor is the main reason people actually get poisoned. absorption of liquid mercury metal is very low even through skin and intestines. excessive prolonged contact will still eventually poison someone though. you cant see the vapor which is why its considered highly toxic and a bit exaggerated to the extent you might get the (dont even look at it or your dead) vibe.
@@derekriggs7659 Not the same as loose elemental mercury giving of vapors in your mouth. I have ethylmercury injected into my srm on an annual basis, but that doesn't mean it's safento gargle quicksilver.
@@emperortbw402 I mean it is safe to the point they passed it around in elementary school and let us dip our hands it in and play with it. Would have been much worse with ethylmercury that is a water soluble organometal. Gargling it would end you. It is just the dose makes the poison and it has uses in medicine.
I'm reminded of the researcher who accidentally spilt 1 or 2 drops of soluble mercury on her gloved hands, and her balance coordination, speech, and memory all deteriorated over the next few months before she ultimately passed away. It was so sad, like she knew she was going to die, and leave her family behind, but she was powerless to stop it. And, the hero that she is, she dedicated her few remaining days to educating others on the proper handling of soluble mercury, so no one else would suffer her same fate. Her name was Karen Wetterhahn, and she was exposed to dimethylmercury.
The really tragic part of that case is she followed the safety practices of the time to complete accuracy. The standards were just flat out wrong about how long it would take dimethylmercury to penetrate latex gloves -- i.e., about 15 seconds. It's not like she was being sloppy or careless with safety.
@@tz4601 Breakthrough data for organometallics is not rare to find. The only thing that is rare is breakthrough data for leached material that experiences a phase change (aka the metal component becomes a gas temporarily before condensing back to a liquid). In the case of organometallic mercury, the breakthrough studies are very well understood. This is why "silvershield" type gloves exist.
I wish I’d had the internet 30 years ago. I worked for a spotwelding company that had these old, large electronic glass tubes filled with mercury. I broke them open and collected 35 pounds worth, put it in a plastic coffee container and stored it on the floor in the basement. A couple years later I noticed the plastic had cracked, and about 20 lbs worth was missing. It either evaporated or spilled between the foundation and house wall into the soil. Now I know it was pretty stupid and I’m lucky I wasnt seriously poisoned
@@archkull the irresponsibility you're displaying is too typical of 2022. Sad you clearly don't care about the only planet you have to live on enough to call poison control.
_I wish I’d had the internet 30 years ago_ well, the wonders of American education, innit? I did not have internet thirty years ago, yet well over forty years back I learned (was taught) about the dangers of mercury, back in my 7th or 8th grade of primary school (chemistry classes). And for a good reason - it was the time when mercury filled "body temperature" thermometers were in wide use (no other fancy gizmos!), and every now and then some of it cracked (by accident) spilling its content inside people's houses. But this is not to poke fun at whatever system or an individual, and there are TWO very simple and effective remedies for dealing with small mercury spills. Yeah, I know - 20 lbs (9 kg, or 0.7 l/ 22.5 fl oz) IS NOT a small spill, but anyway most of it has evaporated by now - so NOW it is "small", and the very first step (kinda irrelevant now) is to gather back as much of spilled mercury as you can. Then try to locate the bigger cracks where it may heave seeped into (UV light may be of help - check "Looking at Mercury Vapour - Periodic Table of Videos" ua-cam.com/video/7ZT7xqwk84E/v-deo.html And then - and this is most important and relevant NOW part - sprinkle the entire floor there with either aluminium powder, or (better still) finely powdered elemental sulphur (that would be "sulfur" in US). Spread it all over, use the broom to "push it" to and fro all over the place, so it could get into all cracks and crevices in the floor. Sulphur reacts with mercury at room temperature forming non-volatile mercury sulphide, which is still kinda "unhealthy" but won't do you any harm if left untouched (unlike elemental mercury). Aluminium powder works in a similar fashion by forming somewhat non-volatile Al - Hg amalgamate, but then the aluminium becomes prone to further oxidation - so this "trapping"of mercury may not last long (see "Aluminum and Mercury" by Nile Red - ua-cam.com/video/IrdYueB9pY4/v-deo.html).
your teacher its right, the muriatic acid, or hydrochloric acid (its the same) its extremely toxic, if you smell or touch it, it may causes corrosive injury in your skin and irritation, laringeal edema or asphyxia
@@adrianbustoscarrillo639 you could probably drink some with no major issue Dilute HCl is already present in your stomach naturally Drinking extra would eat away at your throat and mouth skin a bit, making it painful, as if you vomited, but not much worse than that probably
If you turned the lights off you will see blue glowing as it drips down the condensor. Mercury exhibits a wierd triboluminescent effect when very pure abd in a reduced presdure atmosphere ❤
I know it seems so small, but seeing how to find the volume of a substance with the mass of the same substance is really awesome. I'm just getting back into chemistry and physics after several years away from school, so I'm definitely enjoying picking up small things here and there.
"I was really sick the other day,but after working in the lab I felt a lot better " "Were you working with mercury? " "Why,yes,how did you know" "Here's a rose" "What?" "I'm afraid I have a tight schedule and I cant attend the funeral this weekend"
nilered with mercury: DANGER DANGER, MAXIMUM SAFETY MEASURES MYST BE TAKEN. cody with mercury: do i have any cuts on my hand? no *shoves it into mercury*
Ooh! Have you tried making vermilion (mercuric sulphide)? Apparently it's a visually interesting process with bright red crystals condensing out of the mercury and sulphur vapours and there are different methods which produce different shades from bright orange to deep red. It used to be the most important red pigment in the paintings of the old masters.
@@FirstnameLastname-jd4uq And the green pigment was arsenic based, yellow one was cadmium based, and there was this "lead white" too... Yeah, "do you remember the time when sex was safe and painting dangerous...?" ;-)
8:37 Why can't they make solvent containers that don't dribble down the side every single time you try to pour some? I know fluid dynamics is hard, but come on!
Hes simply doing it too quick - the angle is too shallow for the remaining amount of i-PrOH in that bottle. The usual "dribble" u might be talking about is due to surface tension. Since the container is not made up of a super hydrophobic (and oleophobic) material, the liquid will stick to it and not seperate right away. However... there is no such coating. These pictures or videos of repelling coatings are useless... rub your finger over that area once and the coating is gone. There is also no cheap material. But even if u pay the VERY high price for FEP (a polymer like PTFE) bottles... u get the downside of the large diffusion area. But at least you can pour everything (droples all come out) out of there with no spilling. ;)
it's called surface tension bro. Take a stirring rod and hold it as you would to prevent water or alcohol from dribbling but hold it nearly horizontal so that the tip goes underneath the spout. Or, just use a clean pipette to pull it out.
Re spilling mercury, back in 1965 during a science lab experiment on atmospheric pressure our science teacher a lady had a small bowl of mercury on a lab stand with a 40” glass tube also full of mercury clamped to it and inserted into the bowl. Great experiment until it was over, when she proceeded to pick up the stand, bowl and 40” glass tube to carry it through a doorway to dismantle later ! Well she failed to allow for the glass tube to clear the doorway and it then levered the bowl full of mercury off the stand and spilt the LOT onto the floorboards of the lab . A big splat as at least 200ml of mercury hit the floor and went into a billion little shiny balls all over the place. Many of us helped using folded paper to pick up what we could but it was a job for professionals. True story I watched it happen, these days there would be a full enquiry. Thanks for the vid.
Cody sends his regards. Great video. I will say, your safety measures for handling mercury is refreshing. Cody himself seems incredibly lax about it. I'm sure he knows what he's doing out in his middle of nowhere, but still, I'd probably handle mercury like you do here.
Thank you for informing the viewer of the steps you took to make it safer, most youtube videos omit or play down the risks asociated with using dangerous chemicals
9:15 "Martha! Martha! The neighbor is at it again!" "Oh George, just sit down and read your newspapers." "No Martha! This crazy kid is going to poison all of us one day!"
Im planning to go into chemistry during my second year of highschool, and I've decided that if i ever need to study, i will use this channel and definitely introduce the teacher to it.
Oh! Yesss. But this syntesis is with elemental Mercury (inorganic vapors). However, be special careful with accidentals ORGANIC MERCURY SALTS OR VAPORS→Very serious injuries accidental inhalation 🫁 ⚗️🧬 or contact exposure by the skin !!!! 🖐🏽🧠💦 Remember: Karen Wetterhahn (October 16, 1948 - June 8, 1997), also known as Karen Wetterhahn Jennette, was an American professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the extremely toxic ORGANIC mercury compound dimethylmecury (Hg(CH3)2).
When I went to school they had a huge open tub of mercury that we used to make barometers. We were allowed to play with it and submerge our hands in it without any ventilation or safety equipment.
I had a small amount of mercury covered with water in a small glass container. When I wanted to remove the water I placed the container of mercury in my freezer, waited for the water to freeze and then removed the ice.
One day in my hometown, there was a Hg spill in a gymnasium. Consequently, the school in where the gymnasium is situated had to close until the Hg is wiped to the bone.
Doesn't the mercury oxide (main contaminant) reduce under the distillation conditions? I think this would explain why your remaining mercury is so shiny.
I never distilled mercury but my impromptu method was to use a funnel with filter paper with a pinhole in it. The crap would stick to the paper and the mercury is much cleaner looking but obviously not as pure as distilled mercury.
My thesis advisor told me that in his day UHV systems were run on mercury based diffusion vapor pumps . They held several pounds of hot mercury and were frequently made of glass. When the mercury got dirty some student would get the job of distilling it. To suppress the known violent boiling behavior of mercury boiling chips were added. At the time the easiest material to find that would sink in mercury and not react with it was depleted uranium chunks. I think OSHA would not prove.
Nile you are the best. This was super interesting to watch, albeit dangerous (which makes it even more fun because my butt isn't at sake). Seriously though, thanks for this great video. I specially like your videos about Hg
My thesis advisor told me in the days of Mercury based diffusion pumps it was common practice to use depleted Uranium chunks as boiling chips to suppress the boiling issues you encountered when cleaning the Hg. Wow hot Mercury and DU in the same process. God bless diffusion pump oil.
Nile Red: very safe, by the book. All precautions taken distilled with clean lab equipment Cody's Lab: dump it all into a rusty box, heat up with grilling charcoal. When done just dump it into a dirty bucket "thas some clean mercury right there!"
It was a very dangerous thing to do and I'm glad nothing happened (good thing you did this outside), but you should've removed the water. Before distilling, you can just push mercury through cotton filter. It will absorb any liquid surface contaminants and you'll get a shiny metal happily bouncing in the beaker. No oil to burn in the distilling flask, no water vapor lingering around. Few more advices: - a plastic tub isn't a barrier against hot mercury; steel trough would be ok - cushion all of your vessels; glass ones like to snap with mercury inside bumping on contact with hard surfaces - store mercury in a steel or plastic bottle - less chance of breaking; that storage bottle of yours has a high chance of just losing it lid; mercury is notorious for this awful trick And you shouldn't add water on top of clean mercury. If you're gonna cap it, that's it, it won't leak the vapors out and you can put it in a bag with some sulfur which will stay yellow if everything seals. Water is useful to lower the rate of evaporation and can be used in some uncovered applications, but in a sealed vessel, it's gonna build up again. Only extremely pure Hg will be ok around pure water. If there's even a bit of contamination, it will make the water murky and cover the metal with gunk, so you created the conditions for another cleaning in the future.
Yeah, you are right about everything you said. Thanks for the tips! The mercury will probably get muddled over time again. I will do what you said and store it in a bad with sulfur at the bottom.
When you boil something, it's good to give it a rough surface area. The rough surface provides a place for gas to nucleate. It prevents you from creating a superheated liquid as you raise the temperature to the boiling point. Superheated liquid mercury would have the potential to flash to a boil, and that would surely be a bad time for all involved.
Around 3:00, you weigh the two capped jars of mercury with the mass of the jars, water, etc. included and estimate the volume/mass of mercury by that. You then combined both mercury sources into a 1 L beaker and decant almost all of the water. That may have been a much better opportunity to weigh the mercury before distillation, because you can easily tare off the mass of the 1 L beaker ... the only thing left at that point is pre-distilled mercury and about 50 mL (or ~50 g +/- impurities) of water. You can do the same post-distillation and get a more accurate % yield.
Did you know that there were a few binary cycle power plants built between the 1920s and the 1940s which used a mercury vapor turbine whose condenser was also a steam boiler for the steam turbines? It was used because it could extract work at higher temperatures but lower pressures than with steam. Later advances in metallurgy in superheater materials raised steam plant pressures, temperatures, and efficiencies and effectively rendered the mercury vapor cycle obsolete.
I seem to recall that a Japanese emperor (can't remember his name) was so obsessed with mercury, that he had an underground cavern built, in which was a landscape of all the rivers of Japan, - all filled with mercury! He also had an apothecarian make up some balls of mercury mixed with clay, which he regularly consumed because he believed it to have magical life-giving properties. I'm pretty sure he died young!
I had that Chernobyl effect happen on 3 occasions! I can tell you, how frigging horrible my emotional state of mind was when all that hg went onto the hot plate, causing my bench to be contaminated and not to forget about the expensive glassware taking a shit! Bummer city!
This reminds me of the time my boss attached a new cylinder of HF (yes hydrogen fluoride) to a perflon vacuum line. The apparatus is used to cleave peptides and the protecting groups from the solid support in classical Merrifield peptide synthesis. The vacuum line has a mercury manometer as part of the apparatus. Unfortunately unbeknownst to my bosst, the HF cylinder which had probably been stored for years in the heat had partially decomposed to hydrogen and fluorine gas so the vapor pressure in the cylinder was very high. Normally HF has a reasonably low vapor pressure that allows you to distill it with a moderate vacuum into the reaction vessels using dry ice acetone cooling. You can guess what happened. Upon opening the cylinder there was enough pressure released that it forced all of the mercury out of the manometer (probably 75ml) all into the fume hood where it spread everywhere. I am glad it was not me who made this error, but I learned to always vent the new HF cylinder before attaching it to the vacuum line and I was glad it was not me who had to clean up the mess.
Not sure what the boiling point of mercury is at the reduced pressure, but a PP or HDPE type of plastic bin is going to melt at like 350F max, give or take. Probably better than nothing, but something to consider with potentially catching large amounts of hot mercury.
Liquid helium is much much better but it’s extremely difficult to make because of the extremely low freezing point. It would be even cooler to see superfluid helium
I've distilled my fair share of metallic mercury, and while I do applaud your technique (and bravery) throughout this process, there is a much more efficient procedure that I took from a 1940s physics paper involving design improvements on the mercury vapor diffusion pumps that were quite common at the time. You should start off with your liquid metal in an apparatus configured to be agitated via 'sparging' with inert gas and allow the mercury to slosh around with half strength nitric acid for 4 - 5 hours. Distillation should then be performed (using an analogous set-up, with the addition of a fractioning column) under high vacuum, using an open flame/sand bath as heat source with any explosive boiling avoided entirely via the use of a capillary to introduce a 'bleed' of air in to the system throughout the distillation....this air stream serves a dual purpose, in that, the more common (metallic) impurities found in samples of mercury metal are far more readily oxidized (especially in the vapor phase) and so are FAR more likely to remain behind instead of being carried over via co-distillation (which is weirdly possible in this case). I gained a 4 mmHg correction on my MacLeod gauge after performing this procedure, so it does make a difference, depending on your intended use of the clean, metallic mercury.
You should have calculated the volume by multiplying the radius of the bottle squared with pi and the height of the mercury. Would have been really precise
Soo many questions... "Not using water condenser because temperature..".. continues to put things in ice bath... *mindblown*... And, whats the deal with the broken glass??
"to try and keep things boiling nicely, I added some broken glass" this is the first thing that has ever floored me as much as kiwami's procedures. gonna try that one next time I'm making ramen
Mercury to me always stresses how weird chemistry is. I'm an undergraduate in it, I know the stuff that happens in most of your vids, but especially your cleaning series is showing how strange a world we are living in.
just a thought: you might want to do a blood test to check you Hg levels. as a scientific inquiry. pre experiment (ideally, though not necessary since normal serum Hg levels are undetectable) and post experiment just to determine whether or not your safe guards were sufficient. i'm sure they were good enough to avoid exposure, but still, if it were me, i'd be curious. great vid, as always man
Rxist Prepps Cody from Cody's Lab did that after playing with really big amounts of Hg and even putting his arm half way in it. His levels were not even close to exceeding the normal range.
Colin Ries I saw the one where Cody for tested. The other real problem is that all the tiny amounts of HG that escape into the environment collect and build up.
I was genuinely considering it. Mercury thiocyanate, mercury fulminate, mercuric chloride, mercury distillation...eating tuna... I probably have a nice mercury collection in my body
NileRed nice that you list eating tuna after listing all the chemicals... I don't imagine it would play a big role compared to the other stuff haha. BTW, what about a "extract mercury from tuna" video :P
1:15 If the glass were to break, it would release a crazy amount of Mercury vapour in the air and on top of that, I would have hot mercury spilling everywhere. *proceeds to say 'anyways' and carries on boiling it*
Well in our lab we used to remove mercury with nitric acid from our glassware, followed by chloride treatment to get the Hg2+ precipitated. Will water remove it completely? I doubt it, I would never bring that glassware home again.
Surprised you didn't go with a cheap supplied air respirator, or a proper Hg filtering respirator. and would washing the glassware with the dirty mercury work to collect all the tiny droplets?
Mx mining engineering professor told us about his Visite in a mercury mine in Spain where the heavy meters was spilled all over the floor. And one student was even floating on his back in mercury.
I remember when I was in science class and we were distillating some water and the water had this red substance in it. After 5 minutes we heard an explosion and the distillation apparatus decided to explode. There was glass all over the floor and there was red water on the roof of the science lab. Luckily no one was hurt. For the rest of the day the class I was in only talked about the distillation incident.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
a Hug without u is just toxic
u will just give me radiation sickness though
Hug-u = Hg
Nice
A Cat more like uranium bombs
A Cat Hg is Mercury’s atomic symbol, so remove the u from Hug is Hg, or mercury
"I did it because i thought it would look cool" that is what I love to hear.
It's the best reason!
NileRed how old are you if you don't mind my asking?
Windows NT Workstation 4.0 same
@@NileRed I was wondering where you were doing these experiments and now I know
@@stephensmith8812 my guess is between 20 and 24, in one of his videos he said that he started while in collage
More beautiful than expected! The vapor pressure of mercury at room temp is in the range of 10^-6 atm so I wouldn't expect any mercury to have visibly gone into the trap. I think the remaining mercury was shiny because the mercurous oxide decomposes at a fairly low temperature. Also can you tell me why you didn't distill to completion? I know in normal distillations with water, but I cant think of any contaminants that would cross over here. My distillation apparatus is steel and I cannot see inside so I always heat it until the temperature rises above the boiling point of mercury, at which point I know its done. Should I not do that?
Hi Cody!
Good to see you got verified!
Whoa its Cody on nilereds video.
Probably worried about overheating the flask and cracking it.
Cody'sLab omg it's codys lab
NileRed "Be very careful" Cody's Lab "i dont think i have any cuts on my arm, lets dunk it into a few hundred pounds of mercury"
Nile red be like, "don't want non of those mercury vapours being inhaled"
Codys like watch me flush all this mercury down a toilet.
Cody even got a blood test to see how much he'd absorbed. The answer was "none".
lel
The skin is fucking badass
Most of us played with as a kid in school. Elemental mercury is not likely to do much unless you have wounds and even then it is not as risky as folks scream about. There are compounds of mercury that will kill the shit out of you with even one drop on your hand. Not elemental mercury though. The danger comes from water soluble compounds and ones with an attached methyl group, compounds like mercuric chloride or the massively scary dimethylmercury. Though breathing any metal fumes to include mercury is super bad juju.
"Gonna boil some mercury"
K
"Oh also put some glass in it"
Wat
"It helps it boil"
Gotta remember that for some spaghetti
the glass functions as boiling stones and reduces the amount of flash boiling
It's actually really interesting. I make sweet tea a lot (I'm from the south) and to make the tea, I always heat up water in the microwave to boiling. I usually use old glass measuring cup, but we got some brand new pyrex stuff. I put it in the microwave, and it wasn't boiling, so I put it in the microwave longer, and it still wasn't boiling, so I took it out, and the shock of it hitting the counter caused it to boil violently. The reason is, is that there was nowhere for bubbles to start to form on the new glass.
@@simedinson984 is the word "joke" not a thing in your world
@@luisp.3788 oh yea i understood that he wouldnt but glass in his pasta but wasnt sure if he got the point of having it in the mercury
@@simedinson984 hm, ok
"so how did you get mercury poisoning?"
"I was distilling my own mercury"
"why"
"I thought it would be cool"
Godspeed you magnificent bastard
Mercury poisoning is terrifying.
@Public Commenter comes from the middle English 'God spede you' which means 'God prosper you' ie 'have a prosperous journey' or 'I hope you prosper'
mercury vapor is the main reason people actually get poisoned.
absorption of liquid mercury metal is very low even through skin and intestines. excessive prolonged contact will still eventually poison someone though.
you cant see the vapor which is why its considered highly toxic and a bit exaggerated to the extent you might get the (dont even look at it or your dead) vibe.
@Shrimpinf because it sounds cool to them?
godspeed
NileRed: "work in a well ventilated area, fumes are dangerous"
Codyslab: *WHO WANTS TO SEE ME PUT IT IN MY MOUTH*
if you have amalgam fillings in your teeth, then you already have mercury in your mouth
@@derekriggs7659 Not the same as loose elemental mercury giving of vapors in your mouth. I have ethylmercury injected into my srm on an annual basis, but that doesn't mean it's safento gargle quicksilver.
@@emperortbw402 I mean it is safe to the point they passed it around in elementary school and let us dip our hands it in and play with it. Would have been much worse with ethylmercury that is a water soluble organometal. Gargling it would end you. It is just the dose makes the poison and it has uses in medicine.
And my (not chemistry) prof. "If I would have a drop of it on the table, you would have to evacuate the entire lecture hall" xD
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I'm reminded of the researcher who accidentally spilt 1 or 2 drops of soluble mercury on her gloved hands, and her balance coordination, speech, and memory all deteriorated over the next few months before she ultimately passed away. It was so sad, like she knew she was going to die, and leave her family behind, but she was powerless to stop it. And, the hero that she is, she dedicated her few remaining days to educating others on the proper handling of soluble mercury, so no one else would suffer her same fate. Her name was Karen Wetterhahn, and she was exposed to dimethylmercury.
She will never be forgotten to me, thank you for educating me on this
The really tragic part of that case is she followed the safety practices of the time to complete accuracy. The standards were just flat out wrong about how long it would take dimethylmercury to penetrate latex gloves -- i.e., about 15 seconds. It's not like she was being sloppy or careless with safety.
That's organomercury. Very different than elemental mercury. The major risk here are RCRA regulations and emissions violations (captured on camera).
@@tz4601 Breakthrough data for organometallics is not rare to find. The only thing that is rare is breakthrough data for leached material that experiences a phase change (aka the metal component becomes a gas temporarily before condensing back to a liquid). In the case of organometallic mercury, the breakthrough studies are very well understood. This is why "silvershield" type gloves exist.
It’s only mercury bro
I wish I’d had the internet 30 years ago. I worked for a spotwelding company that had these old, large electronic glass tubes filled with mercury. I broke them open and collected 35 pounds worth, put it in a plastic coffee container and stored it on the floor in the basement. A couple years later I noticed the plastic had cracked, and about 20 lbs worth was missing. It either evaporated or spilled between the foundation and house wall into the soil. Now I know it was pretty stupid and I’m lucky I wasnt seriously poisoned
You should let the EPA know so that the current owner can have it remediated. That is incredibly dangerous. Wow.
@@petragris1947 Bit late after 30 years
@@archkull Someone lives in that home, and it may still be contaminated.
@@archkull the irresponsibility you're displaying is too typical of 2022. Sad you clearly don't care about the only planet you have to live on enough to call poison control.
_I wish I’d had the internet 30 years ago_ well, the wonders of American education, innit? I did not have internet thirty years ago, yet well over forty years back I learned (was taught) about the dangers of mercury, back in my 7th or 8th grade of primary school (chemistry classes). And for a good reason - it was the time when mercury filled "body temperature" thermometers were in wide use (no other fancy gizmos!), and every now and then some of it cracked (by accident) spilling its content inside people's houses.
But this is not to poke fun at whatever system or an individual, and there are TWO very simple and effective remedies for dealing with small mercury spills.
Yeah, I know - 20 lbs (9 kg, or 0.7 l/ 22.5 fl oz) IS NOT a small spill, but anyway most of it has evaporated by now - so NOW it is "small", and the very first step (kinda irrelevant now) is to gather back as much of spilled mercury as you can. Then try to locate the bigger cracks where it may heave seeped into (UV light may be of help - check "Looking at Mercury Vapour - Periodic Table of Videos" ua-cam.com/video/7ZT7xqwk84E/v-deo.html
And then - and this is most important and relevant NOW part - sprinkle the entire floor there with either aluminium powder, or (better still) finely powdered elemental sulphur (that would be "sulfur" in US).
Spread it all over, use the broom to "push it" to and fro all over the place, so it could get into all cracks and crevices in the floor. Sulphur reacts with mercury at room temperature forming non-volatile mercury sulphide, which is still kinda "unhealthy" but won't do you any harm if left untouched (unlike elemental mercury).
Aluminium powder works in a similar fashion by forming somewhat non-volatile Al - Hg amalgamate, but then the aluminium becomes prone to further oxidation - so this "trapping"of mercury may not last long (see "Aluminum and Mercury" by Nile Red - ua-cam.com/video/IrdYueB9pY4/v-deo.html).
mercury and broken glass, breakfast of champions
Trying not to imagine their dump after
Welcome to the Salty Spittoon, how tough are ya?
...I think I prefer sex tbh
@@rubywest5166 yeah of course but you are still here commenting. 😆
*My chemistry teacher:* Put the dilute muriatic acid back under the fume hood, it's extremely toxic
*This guy:* How to Distill Mercury
You think that’s a jump watch codyslab
@@pixelrickk9978 I already ordered my mercury powered toilet
TRAS̸H DØVE got mine last week, be careful it’s got some deadly splash back
your teacher its right, the muriatic acid, or hydrochloric acid (its the same) its extremely toxic, if you smell or touch it, it may causes corrosive injury in your skin and irritation, laringeal edema or asphyxia
@@adrianbustoscarrillo639 you could probably drink some with no major issue
Dilute HCl is already present in your stomach naturally
Drinking extra would eat away at your throat and mouth skin a bit, making it painful, as if you vomited, but not much worse than that probably
NileRed: Wears gloves and works in fume hood.
Cody'sLab: Fills a toilet with mercury and puts his hand in it.
tensorfloof
I'm glad you finally did the distillation. Partly because I'm curious, and partly because there's no other way I'd ever see this happen.
If you turned the lights off you will see blue glowing as it drips down the condensor. Mercury exhibits a wierd triboluminescent effect when very pure abd in a reduced presdure atmosphere ❤
I know it seems so small, but seeing how to find the volume of a substance with the mass of the same substance is really awesome. I'm just getting back into chemistry and physics after several years away from school, so I'm definitely enjoying picking up small things here and there.
NileRed...You are a legend!
Thanks!
Faffing Around With Chemicals im sorry but i like both Nerdrage and NileRed I can't make a decision between the two
Agreed. Both have many merits. :)
ChemPlayer is pretty awesome too.
"I was really sick the other day,but after working in the lab I felt a lot better "
"Were you working with mercury? "
"Why,yes,how did you know"
"Here's a rose"
"What?"
"I'm afraid I have a tight schedule and I cant attend the funeral this weekend"
chemophobia in a nutshell
ive always loved chemistry but i fell out with it after secondary school, your vids are reigniting a passion for it
I like that you're not a know-it-all, and are willing to admit when you've made errors in judgment, or just don't know something.
Thanks
Denton Unger 😂😂 what?
@@juvnchy he is his agent
nilered with mercury: DANGER DANGER, MAXIMUM SAFETY MEASURES MYST BE TAKEN.
cody with mercury: do i have any cuts on my hand? no *shoves it into mercury*
I hope people appreciate how dangerous this is. Liquid mercury isn't that dangerous, but mercury vapor absolutely is.
Ooh! Have you tried making vermilion (mercuric sulphide)? Apparently it's a visually interesting process with bright red crystals condensing out of the mercury and sulphur vapours and there are different methods which produce different shades from bright orange to deep red. It used to be the most important red pigment in the paintings of the old masters.
But it was toxic
@@FirstnameLastname-jd4uq You don't say?! A historic pigment was toxic? A mercury compound, even? REALLY??? This is news to me!!!
@@FirstnameLastname-jd4uq And the green pigment was arsenic based, yellow one was cadmium based, and there was this "lead white" too... Yeah, "do you remember the time when sex was safe and painting dangerous...?"
;-)
Mildly humorous anecdote: There IS a class of vacuum pump that uses liquid mercury in motion as a pumping medium.
Old. It's basically an aspirator with mercury instead of water.
Yeah Cody's Lab made one
There is also the most sci-fi looking obsolete equipment ever made; the mercury arc rectifier.
You should do a collab with Cody's Lab
they live so far apart tho
@@letsreview3039 plane and or car
@@PlinkyVR nah, walk
@@Tyler-hu2ns that or a corvette stingray road trip sounds fun
the profile pic of the op is god now
Now that you have distilled your quicksliver, you are pure of heart.
8:37 Why can't they make solvent containers that don't dribble down the side every single time you try to pour some?
I know fluid dynamics is hard, but come on!
Salvatore Shiggerino ^rt
Hes simply doing it too quick - the angle is too shallow for the remaining amount of i-PrOH in that bottle.
The usual "dribble" u might be talking about is due to surface tension. Since the container is not made up of a super hydrophobic (and oleophobic) material, the liquid will stick to it and not seperate right away.
However... there is no such coating. These pictures or videos of repelling coatings are useless... rub your finger over that area once and the coating is gone. There is also no cheap material. But even if u pay the VERY high price for FEP (a polymer like PTFE) bottles... u get the downside of the large diffusion area. But at least you can pour everything (droples all come out) out of there with no spilling. ;)
it's called surface tension bro. Take a stirring rod and hold it as you would to prevent water or alcohol from dribbling but hold it nearly horizontal so that the tip goes underneath the spout. Or, just use a clean pipette to pull it out.
Its so you waste tons of it and you have to buy more (you could always use a glass rod to guide the liquid)
It never occurred to me how dense and heavy unicorn blood is..
Re spilling mercury, back in 1965 during a science lab experiment on atmospheric pressure our science teacher a lady had a small bowl of mercury on a lab stand with a 40” glass tube also full of mercury clamped to it and inserted into the bowl. Great experiment until it was over, when she proceeded to pick up the stand, bowl and 40” glass tube to carry it through a doorway to dismantle later ! Well she failed to allow for the glass tube to clear the doorway and it then levered the bowl full of mercury off the stand and spilt the LOT onto the floorboards of the lab . A big splat as at least 200ml of mercury hit the floor and went into a billion little shiny balls all over the place. Many of us helped using folded paper to pick up what we could but it was a job for professionals. True story I watched it happen, these days there would be a full enquiry. Thanks for the vid.
Your videos have progressed from good to amazingly interesting! Keep it up!
Thanks!
Ngl i thought the thumbnail was a bong 💀
…filled with mercury
The last rip you'll ever take lol
i remember when your subscribers where 10,000 when I started watching your videos, good job nile red good job
Mercury vapor + elaborate glassware + lots of heat? Whooo! Sounds like a fun afternoon!
Cody sends his regards. Great video. I will say, your safety measures for handling mercury is refreshing. Cody himself seems incredibly lax about it. I'm sure he knows what he's doing out in his middle of nowhere, but still, I'd probably handle mercury like you do here.
5:10 looks like a crazy smoking contraption my friends would make when they didn't have a bong
Thank you for informing the viewer of the steps you took to make it safer, most youtube videos omit or play down the risks asociated with using dangerous chemicals
Don’t understand most of what you say, but I find your videos so fascinating. Please keep sharing.
I love your channel so much I give a thumb up to every video to remember which of them I've already seen.
This video turned out to be a great drinking game! Every time nile says mercury, you gotta take a sip.
You need help
@@CatsBtrippin whats wrong with staying hydrated with water?
@@LKLM138 it causes cancer ♋️
9:15
"Martha! Martha! The neighbor is at it again!"
"Oh George, just sit down and read your newspapers."
"No Martha! This crazy kid is going to poison all of us one day!"
Im planning to go into chemistry during my second year of highschool, and I've decided that if i ever need to study, i will use this channel and definitely introduce the teacher to it.
I blew my Chemistry teacher's mind when I showed him the liquid carbon dioxide video.
I am immensely impressed that you did this and your nervous system is still intact. A testament to your chemistry expertise.
Oh! Yesss.
But this syntesis is with elemental Mercury (inorganic vapors).
However, be special careful with accidentals ORGANIC MERCURY SALTS OR VAPORS→Very serious injuries accidental inhalation 🫁 ⚗️🧬 or contact exposure by the skin !!!! 🖐🏽🧠💦
Remember: Karen Wetterhahn (October 16, 1948 - June 8, 1997), also known as Karen Wetterhahn Jennette, was an American professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the extremely toxic ORGANIC mercury compound
dimethylmecury (Hg(CH3)2).
I almost cried when he put that beautiful, pristine mercury into that grimy looking jar😩😩😭whyyyyy
I was going to make a sodium hydride joke, but NaH
That was Ba(Na)₂S!
🤣🤣🤣
OH! I am a bit late...
When I went to school they had a huge open tub of mercury that we used to make barometers. We were allowed to play with it and submerge our hands in it without any ventilation or safety equipment.
Cody'sLab did that on youtube
It's probably not super dangerous
Best video I've ever seen TBH
thanks!!
I had a small amount of mercury covered with water in a small glass container. When I wanted to remove the water I placed the container of mercury in my freezer, waited for the water to freeze and then removed the ice.
How do you get your glassware so shiny after using it over and over in "dirty reactions" again?
Greetings from Germany
Dennis Hufe He cleanes it with a base and acid bath.
ua-cam.com/video/AsPpxQtZcUg/v-deo.html
One day in my hometown, there was a Hg spill in a gymnasium. Consequently, the school in where the gymnasium is situated had to close until the Hg is wiped to the bone.
"I did it in a very well ventilated area"
Outside. He did it outside. 10:06
Hard to get more ventilation than that
I love the way the Mercury beads bounce (at 11:48+) inside the distillation tube. Great video, thanks.
Doesn't the mercury oxide (main contaminant) reduce under the distillation conditions? I think this would explain why your remaining mercury is so shiny.
I never distilled mercury but my impromptu method was to use a funnel with filter paper with a pinhole in it.
The crap would stick to the paper and the mercury is much cleaner looking but obviously not as pure as distilled mercury.
He actually did that in one or maybe both of the two videos where he made mercury.
In college I used to fall asleep in chemistry classes. Now i watch your videos to cure my insomnia.
My thesis advisor told me that in his day UHV systems were run on mercury based diffusion vapor pumps . They held several pounds of hot mercury and were frequently made of glass. When the mercury got dirty some student would get the job of distilling it. To suppress the known violent boiling behavior of mercury boiling chips were added. At the time the easiest material to find that would sink in mercury and not react with it was depleted uranium chunks. I think OSHA would not prove.
How do I condense mercury
Nile you are the best. This was super interesting to watch, albeit dangerous (which makes it even more fun because my butt isn't at sake). Seriously though, thanks for this great video. I specially like your videos about Hg
I tried watching you to fall asleep and ended up watching like 20 of your videos
My thesis advisor told me in the days of Mercury based diffusion pumps it was common practice to use depleted Uranium chunks as boiling chips to suppress the boiling issues you encountered when cleaning the Hg. Wow hot Mercury and DU in the same process. God bless diffusion pump oil.
Nile Red: very safe, by the book. All precautions taken distilled with clean lab equipment
Cody's Lab: dump it all into a rusty box, heat up with grilling charcoal. When done just dump it into a dirty bucket "thas some clean mercury right there!"
A UA-camr worked with dirty Mercury for several hours, this is what happened to his flask
I’m not sure how I got into watching your videos but I’ve learned more watching your videos than I ever did in school.
It was a very dangerous thing to do and I'm glad nothing happened (good thing you did this outside), but you should've removed the water. Before distilling, you can just push mercury through cotton filter. It will absorb any liquid surface contaminants and you'll get a shiny metal happily bouncing in the beaker. No oil to burn in the distilling flask, no water vapor lingering around.
Few more advices:
- a plastic tub isn't a barrier against hot mercury; steel trough would be ok
- cushion all of your vessels; glass ones like to snap with mercury inside bumping on contact with hard surfaces
- store mercury in a steel or plastic bottle - less chance of breaking; that storage bottle of yours has a high chance of just losing it lid; mercury is notorious for this awful trick
And you shouldn't add water on top of clean mercury. If you're gonna cap it, that's it, it won't leak the vapors out and you can put it in a bag with some sulfur which will stay yellow if everything seals. Water is useful to lower the rate of evaporation and can be used in some uncovered applications, but in a sealed vessel, it's gonna build up again.
Only extremely pure Hg will be ok around pure water. If there's even a bit of contamination, it will make the water murky and cover the metal with gunk, so you created the conditions for another cleaning in the future.
Yeah, you are right about everything you said. Thanks for the tips! The mercury will probably get muddled over time again. I will do what you said and store it in a bad with sulfur at the bottom.
i sure will watch this again in years time
Could you explain more about how the broken glass would help?
you feed the boiling mercury broken glass to calm it down so it will be less hungry and wont eat your glass container
When you boil something, it's good to give it a rough surface area. The rough surface provides a place for gas to nucleate. It prevents you from creating a superheated liquid as you raise the temperature to the boiling point. Superheated liquid mercury would have the potential to flash to a boil, and that would surely be a bad time for all involved.
so glad codyslab mentioned this vid
“You can see my house”
That's a beautiful house.
Great video! the mercury that was cleaned looked really good!
Thanks!
I really enjoy your videos and watch some of them two or three times!
Now she's back in the atmosphere
with drops of mercury in her hair
hey hey hey
Around 3:00, you weigh the two capped jars of mercury with the mass of the jars, water, etc. included and estimate the volume/mass of mercury by that. You then combined both mercury sources into a 1 L beaker and decant almost all of the water. That may have been a much better opportunity to weigh the mercury before distillation, because you can easily tare off the mass of the 1 L beaker ... the only thing left at that point is pre-distilled mercury and about 50 mL (or ~50 g +/- impurities) of water. You can do the same post-distillation and get a more accurate % yield.
Does solid (frozen) mercury do anything interesting? Would love to see more mercury exploration!
Did you know that there were a few binary cycle power plants built between the 1920s and the 1940s which used a mercury vapor turbine whose condenser was also a steam boiler for the steam turbines? It was used because it could extract work at higher temperatures but lower pressures than with steam. Later advances in metallurgy in superheater materials raised steam plant pressures, temperatures, and efficiencies and effectively rendered the mercury vapor cycle obsolete.
I seem to recall that a Japanese emperor (can't remember his name) was so obsessed with mercury, that he had an underground cavern built, in which was a landscape of all the rivers of Japan, - all filled with mercury! He also had an apothecarian make up some balls of mercury mixed with clay, which he regularly consumed because he believed it to have magical life-giving properties. I'm pretty sure he died young!
I had that Chernobyl effect happen on 3 occasions! I can tell you, how frigging horrible my emotional state of mind was when all that hg went onto the hot plate, causing my bench to be contaminated and not to forget about the expensive glassware taking a shit! Bummer city!
This reminds me of the time my boss attached a new cylinder of HF (yes hydrogen fluoride) to a perflon vacuum line. The apparatus is used to cleave peptides and the protecting groups from the solid support in classical Merrifield peptide synthesis. The vacuum line has a mercury manometer as part of the apparatus. Unfortunately unbeknownst to my bosst, the HF cylinder which had probably been stored for years in the heat had partially decomposed to hydrogen and fluorine gas so the vapor pressure in the cylinder was very high. Normally HF has a reasonably low vapor pressure that allows you to distill it with a moderate vacuum into the reaction vessels using dry ice acetone cooling. You can guess what happened. Upon opening the cylinder there was enough pressure released that it forced all of the mercury out of the manometer (probably 75ml) all into the fume hood where it spread everywhere. I am glad it was not me who made this error, but I learned to always vent the new HF cylinder before attaching it to the vacuum line and I was glad it was not me who had to clean up the mess.
Not sure what the boiling point of mercury is at the reduced pressure, but a PP or HDPE type of plastic bin is going to melt at like 350F max, give or take. Probably better than nothing, but something to consider with potentially catching large amounts of hot mercury.
He should have filled it with either water or sand.
Make liquid hydrogen. It would be truly fascinating but I understand that you probably don't have everything you need to do it.
Liquid helium is much much better but it’s extremely difficult to make because of the extremely low freezing point. It would be even cooler to see superfluid helium
GD humanppplus isn't helium's boiling point close to absolute zero? Or is it the melting point?
yeah but you best need liquid He to make it...
mAkE sOLiD HeLiUm
Joe Holland how about being a superfluid/superconductor
I've distilled my fair share of metallic mercury, and while I do applaud your technique (and bravery) throughout this process, there is a much more efficient procedure that I took from a 1940s physics paper involving design improvements on the mercury vapor diffusion pumps that were quite common at the time. You should start off with your liquid metal in an apparatus configured to be agitated via 'sparging' with inert gas and allow the mercury to slosh around with half strength nitric acid for 4 - 5 hours. Distillation should then be performed (using an analogous set-up, with the addition of a fractioning column) under high vacuum, using an open flame/sand bath as heat source with any explosive boiling avoided entirely via the use of a capillary to introduce a 'bleed' of air in to the system throughout the distillation....this air stream serves a dual purpose, in that, the more common (metallic) impurities found in samples of mercury metal are far more readily oxidized (especially in the vapor phase) and so are FAR more likely to remain behind instead of being carried over via co-distillation (which is weirdly possible in this case). I gained a 4 mmHg correction on my MacLeod gauge after performing this procedure, so it does make a difference, depending on your intended use of the clean, metallic mercury.
You purified Mercury to calibrate equipment?
You should have calculated the volume by multiplying the radius of the bottle squared with pi and the height of the mercury. Would have been really precise
When preparing, I did that as well, to confirm it was close.
Soo many questions... "Not using water condenser because temperature..".. continues to put things in ice bath... *mindblown*...
And, whats the deal with the broken glass??
"to try and keep things boiling nicely, I added some broken glass" this is the first thing that has ever floored me as much as kiwami's procedures. gonna try that one next time I'm making ramen
*crunch*
If placed within an enclosed space and given enough rotation what's the chances of bulletproof?
hey brother where do you get your hg? it took me 6 months to hunt down 1lb and it cost just short of a pound of flesh lol.
Hi Nigel, why did you stress to not distill everything and make sure to leave something left? Why's that so?
@2:08 -- that was an *explicit* warning, *not* an _implicit_ one. You said it straight out that it's dangerous and will produce mercury vapours.
I meant i was implicitly telling you guys to not try it yourself. You are right though, the actual warning was explicit.
Mercury to me always stresses how weird chemistry is. I'm an undergraduate in it, I know the stuff that happens in most of your vids, but especially your cleaning series is showing how strange a world we are living in.
just a thought: you might want to do a blood test to check you Hg levels. as a scientific inquiry.
pre experiment (ideally, though not necessary since normal serum Hg levels are undetectable) and post experiment just to determine whether or not your safe guards were sufficient. i'm sure they were good enough to avoid exposure, but still, if it were me, i'd be curious.
great vid, as always man
Rxist Prepps he may just use a couple hairs and liquid chromatography, that is cheap and can detect low concentrations.
Rxist Prepps Cody from Cody's Lab did that after playing with really big amounts of Hg and even putting his arm half way in it. His levels were not even close to exceeding the normal range.
Colin Ries I saw the one where Cody for tested. The other real problem is that all the tiny amounts of HG that escape into the environment collect and build up.
I was genuinely considering it. Mercury thiocyanate, mercury fulminate, mercuric chloride, mercury distillation...eating tuna... I probably have a nice mercury collection in my body
NileRed nice that you list eating tuna after listing all the chemicals... I don't imagine it would play a big role compared to the other stuff haha. BTW, what about a "extract mercury from tuna" video :P
nigel: would probably own a mercury lab
cody: would definitely own a mercury lab
As one chemist to another - you are insane, mate ^^;
this gotta be the only experiment videos that I see on youtube that I completely agree with the "do not try this at home" warning
10:50 what mercury sees when I stare at it distilling at 5 am
1:15 If the glass were to break, it would release a crazy amount of Mercury vapour in the air and on top of that, I would have hot mercury spilling everywhere.
*proceeds to say 'anyways' and carries on boiling it*
11:34
Looks like a spooky hand holding the thing (excuse my technical jargon) in the bottom left corner
yes
Its a 3 pronged clamp, and usuall they have a plastic coat so it doesn't look like a spooky metal hand
Just watching mercury boil feels scary and you kind of pull away from the computer screen, as if mercury vapours could ooze out any moment.
"We're about to do something extremely dangerous. *Let's get started!* "
Well in our lab we used to remove mercury with nitric acid from our glassware, followed by chloride treatment to get the Hg2+ precipitated. Will water remove it completely? I doubt it, I would never bring that glassware home again.
Surprised you didn't go with a cheap supplied air respirator, or a proper Hg filtering respirator.
and would washing the glassware with the dirty mercury work to collect all the tiny droplets?
Robert Szasz You can see in the reflection he distilled it outside.
I hoped I caught that with an edit before anyone saw....
Using some mercury to get the last drops isnt a bad idea at all.
Mx mining engineering professor told us about his Visite in a mercury mine in Spain where the heavy meters was spilled all over the floor. And one student was even floating on his back in mercury.
@ 1:42 I thought you set your boiling flask in a frickin pie... My brain might be telling me to sleep, but what does it know... MORE SCIENCE!
I remember when I was in science class and we were distillating some water and the water had this red substance in it. After 5 minutes we heard an explosion and the distillation apparatus decided to explode. There was glass all over the floor and there was red water on the roof of the science lab. Luckily no one was hurt. For the rest of the day the class I was in only talked about the distillation incident.
You deserve much more subs!!
thanks!
Great video, as always. Oh and I like when things heat up in your videos.