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At that antient times where on earth they find so much mercury? And how they place it there without killing themselves? And how they learned that it was lethal?
by darkhorn 12y ago
At that antient times where on earth they find so much mercury? And how they place it there without killing themselves? And how they learned that it was lethal?
- Eupolemos 12y agoIn Cinnabar. They (most likely) didn't know it was unhealthy.
- jjoonathan 12y agoIt's worth mentioning that Hg extraction isn't very complicated. Its the kind of thing that we might expect people fooling around with putting stuff in fires would discover by accident. Just roast the ore (Cinnabar, HgS) at the relatively modest temperature of 350˚C or higher and the mercury will evaporate off, likely condensing on a nearby surface. Bam, liquid mercury. Control the condensation and you've got liquid mercury on a large scale. By comparison, smelting iron is much more complicated (higher temperatures + it's a chemical reaction not just "bake and go" + residual carbon content must be controlled for strength + annealing strategy significantly affects its desirable properties).
- Turing_Machine 12y agoLiquid mercury isn't actually all that toxic. Not what you'd call healthy, maybe, but not anywhere near the level of some of the mercury compounds.