Aluminum forgings hate mercury, especially in the presence of chlorides and other halides. The mercury alloys with the aluminum, and poisons the oxide film that protects it. You want to bring down a $100M jet fighter? A drop of Hg on the wing knuckle is your huckleberry.
I worked in the lab of the foundry where I worked for 35 years, for awhile. We had a bottle of Hg, about the size of 2 hockey pucks. It is heavy as hell, but fun to play around with. They tell me that even breathing the fumes from it is really dangerous and bad for you. We had a special set of tools made up of copper to pick up any drops that we spilled. We didn't use it in the lab, but it was my understanding that in times past, before all of the modern machines they used it, as a standard for running the spectrographs. Now, they have everything for running lab testing, from x-ray units, to the latest in scanning microscopes. It is amazing to actually see at the sub atomic particle level. And to see the shear line of some of the aero space metals that they make now, and how they make them strong, but eliminating any crystal edges that could give a shear face. Truly high tech stuff, and I had a hand in developing that. I melted heats for that, under high vacuum, of up to 8,000 lb, that were valued of over 10 million dollars. They went into the Rolls Royce airplane engines, for their newest planes. The true secret in to control everything including the amount of oxygen and nitrogen, down to ppm levels. It takes a lot of maintenance work on the furnace to ensure that you are able to keep the vacuum levels low enough to ensure less than 3 ppm of O2 and less than 2 ppm of N2.
Looks like your brain on the brown acid.
ReplyDeleteWe used to play with small amounts of Mercury back in the day when it was readily available even to teenagers, but I never saw this reaction.
ReplyDeleteShould be a lot of my generation with mercury poisoning, or maybe there is.
DeleteI used to rub mercury on my wedding ring for a neat trick
Daryl
My grandfather had a jar of mercury for us kids to play with when we visited. My cousins and I used to rub it on coins.
DeleteCreepy.
DeleteWhat is that? Kind of weird science
ReplyDeleteAnd he probably buys canned biscuits because he don't know the ingredients to make dough rise.
ReplyDeleteSorry to be harsh, but I'm possibly correct.
I know how to mix biscuits so they rise, but unrolling a can and smacking it on the edge of the counter is faster and easier.
DeleteSo what next there Jesus?
Alchemy class? Ohio Guy
ReplyDeleteMercury reacting with aluminum.
ReplyDeleteIsn't that mercury + aluminum?
ReplyDeleteAluminum forgings hate mercury, especially in the presence of chlorides and other halides. The mercury alloys with the aluminum, and poisons the oxide film that protects it. You want to bring down a $100M jet fighter? A drop of Hg on the wing knuckle is your huckleberry.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I was hoping someone would explain that.
DeleteDon't tell the A-Rabs. Bring some mercury on a plane and you'll have some major problems.
ReplyDeleteI worked in the lab of the foundry where I worked for 35 years, for awhile. We had a bottle of Hg, about the size of 2 hockey pucks. It is heavy as hell, but fun to play around with.
ReplyDeleteThey tell me that even breathing the fumes from it is really dangerous and bad for you.
We had a special set of tools made up of copper to pick up any drops that we spilled. We didn't use it in the lab, but it was my understanding that in times past, before all of the modern machines they used it, as a standard for running the spectrographs.
Now, they have everything for running lab testing, from x-ray units, to the latest in scanning microscopes. It is amazing to actually see at the sub atomic particle level. And to see the shear line of some of the aero space metals that they make now, and how they make them strong, but eliminating any crystal edges that could give a shear face. Truly high tech stuff, and I had a hand in developing that.
I melted heats for that, under high vacuum, of up to 8,000 lb, that were valued of over 10 million dollars. They went into the Rolls Royce airplane engines, for their newest planes.
The true secret in to control everything including the amount of oxygen and nitrogen, down to ppm levels. It takes a lot of maintenance work on the furnace to ensure that you are able to keep the vacuum levels low enough to ensure less than 3 ppm of O2 and less than 2 ppm of N2.