Mercury Bell - Periodic Table of Videos

I don't know how long it will last of course in the air normally I have it in dry ice I mean its heat capacity is quite big so we've come to London right away from Nottingham to have a look at something here at University College one of the chemists here Andrew seller told me that they had something really quite exciting to show us that would go on down well in our periodic video so let's go in and see what it is yeah okay I've been intrigued by mercury ever since I was a child really ever since in National Geographic I saw that fantastic photograph of a minor at Almaden it was actually sitting floating in a vat of mercury but I kind of wondered whether there was a way in which one could actually show solid mercury and solid mercury is a very surprising observation made by James Dewar in the nineteenth century and I thought the best thing to do would be cast a bill and bam well a bell and a friend of mine at King's College mark me Dominic lent me his wooden template and so what I decided to do is to actually make a mold in which I could cast a mercury bail so so I cast myself a mold based on this in two halves and upper half which did the outside and then a lower half which didn't inside and now I had a beautiful sort of two pops which fit together with which I get costomer Curie well then there was the problem of how to cooler and my first thought of course you know typical you know let's use liquid nitrogen that was a disaster because the mold started to crack so at that point I thought okay let's be gentle and I used dry ice acetone so I filled a bucket with dry ice acetone put my molded let it cool down for a good hour and then I started pouring in the mercury head through the top through the top through the top it was a nerve-racking process because of course you can't see anything well when I was finally done disaster struck hit I couldn't get it out of the mold ah so in the end I had to take a chisel to the mold and smash it apart so this really will be one of a kind I'm not sure that I'm going to use right in the mo I've broken the mold unquestionably um it's been sitting in my -70 freezer for some time this is the piece and we should just have a look so here we go we'll open it and there you can see the ice bucket which actually contains my bell now as I said this is minus 70 it's quite cold and here it is you see them all and here is the original and there it is there is my Bell is it ending well I think you should try it for yourself gosh it's very heavy it must be 2 or 3 kilos I mean it's not the most perfect Bell in the world it needs a little trimming around the edges but it certainly looks like a bell yes said does it look well that's the interesting question and I've been I've been sort of trying to get this perfect the only thing is I haven't got anything to ring it with you realise that the inside of the Bell if you look inside it hasn't actually got a knocker so we're gonna have to find something else what's that my battery we just certainly try your biro if you wanted to try your burrow you ready not very exciting is it no that is hidden together now the thing about it is the if in fact I done my homework right at the beginning and I gone and looked up the elasticity the stiffness and so on of mercury I would have realized that it's in fact rather softer than last and so one of the things you don't want to do is to drop the bill because it dents very very easily um but yes it a slight disappointment that it doesn't ring loudly um but it's certainly I think a very very beautiful object so why did you make it was it just for fun or were you trying to prove a real scientific point no I think this was entirely for fun I mean to do something sort of semi and possible and I think nobody's tried before and a mercury bail I've never heard of and so I thought you know let's be the horse but very well that it's great to meet an innovator in a small way and so here we go back into the tomb very much like like being in Egypt I think and seeing the mummy in its sarcophagus well thank you very much

Channel: Periodic Videos

Views: 230,576

Rating: 4.7974057 out of 5

Keywords: mercury, bell

Id: 8mJEsj3N50o

Length: 5min 5sec (305 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 23 2009

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WOW HAIR

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And if you hear it even once, IT WILL POISON YOU.

[u/warmwaffles]

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