So, #1 I'm not a student or a child or close, I'm creeping up very close to 40. That said, I enjoy casting my own lead bullets, and loading my own cartridges, hence the screen name. So it's always bugged me I still have to rely on a vendor to obtain primers..... got to looking and well that mercury fulminate doesn't look to complicated to make, and I already have azeotropic HNO3, and a few ml of Hg, and who doesn't have a little 95% ethanol hanging around the liqueur cabinet right? So I took 10ml of the azeotropic HNO3 and added approximately 1ml of Hg, I say approximate because the disposable pipette I was using was not wanting to keep the heavy mercury in it once the vacuum was lowered, so I had to try to carefully measure out 1ml in the pipette without lose enough vacuum to keep it there and transfer it to the beaker with the acid, while trying to avoid any splashing..... Anyway so that was successful and I fairly quickly observed the formation of nitrogen dioxide... I was doing this outside btw. So I obviously distance myself, wait a bit, approach it, swirl it to get it to release more of the off gas, I do this a few times, and then as I approach this time I notice a rather large crystal formation forming on one side of the beaker.... well that's odd and unexpected, cool but not supposed to be there, nothing should be precipitating out or crystalizing. I swirl it and suddnely I have a LOT of white crystals, with one very large one. The large one had thin long structures that were very needle like, the small ones are like long thin shards.
Some of the Hg remained and was not reacted, a good amount actually was recovered but not added back to the small quantity I have but separated off and the acid decanted as much as possible, a very small amount made it into a 1ml vial and hasn't done anything over the course of the last 24hr. Sooo, I took some of the crystals careful to not cross contaminate anything or contaminate myself with this likely VERY toxic substance that I don't know what it is, at first I was thinking some sort of mercury salt, which heaven help me please let it not be. a small sample didn't react or dissolve in water, at least not over the last hour, okay, tried a sample with 91% IPA, nothing, tried a sample with 95% ethanol nothing, at least not in the cool (60's) outside air temps here. Here's some pictures, any suggestions for helping to I.D. what this undesired side reaction is? The Hg was sourced from old thermostat switches 20 or so years ago. Over the course of today I also happened to note the possibility the Hg wasn't pure, it could have been contaminated by some other metal that can amalgam with it. Would anyone happen to know if this could be intentional for mercury switches, or perhaps just a matter of "what's the point in purifying it for this application?" type simple buisness decision. OR if in fact mercury in switches is usual pure?
