Liquid mercury Content: 99.999% Packaging: 34.5KG

Physical Properties

It is the only metal that exists in a liquid state at normal temperature and pressure. The melting point is -38.87℃, the boiling point is 356.6℃, and the density is 13.59g/cm3. It has strong cohesion and is stable in the air. Mercury vapor evaporates at room temperature, and the vapor is highly toxic. Natural mercury is a mixture of seven isotopes of mercury. Mercury is slightly soluble in water, and its solubility increases in the presence of air. Mercury is ubiquitous in nature. Generally, animals and plants contain trace amounts of mercury. Therefore, trace amounts of mercury exist in our food, which can be metabolized through excretion and hair.

Alloys: Mercury readily forms alloys with most common metals, and these alloys are collectively known as amalgams (or amalgams). Metals that can alloy with mercury include gold and silver, but not iron, so iron powder has long been used to replace mercury. Some other first row transition metals are difficult to alloy, but do not include manganese, copper and zinc. Other elements that do not easily alloy with mercury are platinum and some other metals. Sodium amalgam is a commonly used reducing agent in organic synthesis and is also used in high pressure sodium lamps. When mercury and pure metal of aluminum come into contact, they tend to form aluminum amalgam, because aluminum amalgam can destroy the oxide layer that prevents further oxidation of metal aluminum (brush test), so even small amounts of mercury can severely corrode metal aluminum . For this reason, mercury cannot, in the vast majority of cases, be carried on an aircraft because it can easily alloy with exposed aluminum parts of the aircraft and pose a hazard.

Liquid: Mercury, a metal, exists in a strange liquid state at room temperature. The theory of relativistic contraction effects can provide an explanation for this unusual phenomenon. Similar to gold, the shrinking and stabilizing of mercury’s 6s orbital leads to a so-called “inert electron pair” effect: the mercury’s 6s2 shell is rendered inert during bonding. It can be seen that the 6s26p excitation energy of mercury far exceeds the corresponding excitation energy of cadmium and zinc. According to the general periodic law, the energy interval should decrease with the increase of the principal quantum number. Therefore, the narrowing of the energy interval from Zn to Cd is expected, whereas the energy interval increases abruptly from Cd to Hg. Here it can be seen again that it is the relativistic contraction effect that makes the fully filled 6s2 shell stable and stable, so the 6s26p energy interval of mercury increases sharply. As long as the desired excitation energy is not obtained, strong bonds cannot be formed between mercury atoms with inert 6s2 shells. The ground state Hg2 is only mutually maintained by van der Waals forces, so metallic mercury is liquid at room temperature.