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18 Comments
- InternetUser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Mercury fact: the term "mad as a hatter" comes from 19th century hat makers going nuts because they used mercury as part of the whole, erm, hat making process.
- jonathantneal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14To add to your comment: It was a common early industrial occupational disease of hatters, mainly within the production of felt hats (example: the top hat). The mercury was used to make animal fur (commonly beaver or rabbit) mat more easily before the fibres were shaved off the skin and turned into felt. The process of brushing a mercury compound solution was referred to as carroting because it made the fur turn orange. Anyway, in all these steps, hatters working in poorly ventilated workshops would breathe in the mercury compounds and accumulate the metal in their bodies.
Physical symptoms of mercury poisoning include trembling (known at the time as hatter’s shakes), loosening of teeth, loss of co-ordination, and slurred speech; mental ones include irritability, loss of memory, depression, anxiety, and other personality changes. This was called mad hatter syndrome.
I collected and re-editorialized this information from http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-mad2.htm - jsully, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Here's the thing - the liquid mercury we all know and love is not really harmful to you - at all. Even if you drink it (though I'm definitely not advocating :) it's got a very low toxicity. What is really deadly, is that mercury tends to oxidize at room temperature and form mercury oxide - which is uber-toxic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning - Kamic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7My uncle said he used to put some in his palm and watch it slide around. Strange how when we find out something new with technology, how suddenly we look differently at things and our ignorance. I brought mercury to high school about 8 years ago in a biohazard container to show the science class :)
- thestorey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4SO thats what pwp stands for. I always thought it was personal word processesor....
- zcreem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Nice article, I don't know about sticking my arm in a bath of the stuff, but we did play with as kids in science and from broken thermometers, cool stuff.... what was I saying eh um oh never mind.
- carve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I remember mercury demonstrations in my chemistry class. Our teacher passed around a medicine bottle full of mercury so we could feel how surprisingly heavy it was (It is denser than lead!). Then he poured the bottle into a beaker and threw in some steel bolts. They floated like corks, which he used to explain the principles of buoyancy. He pulled the bolts out of the mercury with his fingers, cautioning us not to do that ourselves. This was, surprisingly, 1994.
- jonathantneal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually, I've seen photos of people bathing in Mercury pools, but I couldn't find any during a quick search on Google. However, I did find a small video of Calder's Mercury Fountain.
http://www.bcn.fjmiro.es/angles/_coleperm/qtvr/fontmercuri.mov - epilonious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What does it say about my personality if my first thoughts of drinking liquid mercury are "Ooooh! Glitter-poo!"
- Metalcastr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Theodore Gray writes lots of neat articles in popsci
- GhostToon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well its liquid so wouldn't it be "Glitter-pee"?
- bontaq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've played with mercury a bit, my grandfather had a few pounds. Fun stuff! It's cool how it scatters when it hits something.
- zcreem, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Don't be a fool, of course we were.
- blast_flame, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Everything fun turns out to be deadly. Maybe us humans just weren't ment to live.
- Arancaytar, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1More likely, we just weren't meant to be idiots.
- karmakanic, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Pretty cool.....just don't let your fish swim in it.
- Pushkin, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1Oh, I also had mercury drops in my palm.. that might explain something.. I think it might explain something or other... but what?
- ccheath, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1mod parents up
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