Questions About Mercury and Aluminum.

[Jojowasaman]

 Hello,

I have my nephews this weekend and I am doing a bit of research before they get here because I would like to be able to guide them through a science experiment that they’ve been asking me to help them with for ages. 

The experiement is the reaction that occurs when Aluminum is exposed to mercury. They are wanting to recreate the exact reaction they saw on YouTube.

I’ve got all the materials to do it (in theory) and luckily I decided to conduct a test run before they arrived. 

My problem is I can’t get the reaction to start at all. 

I’ve tried to contacting the person that made the video but I haven’t heard back yet. 

 

1.) Here is what I’ve done. I preped the aluminum with sand paper and then drilled a hole to hold the mercury....and then added the mercury and that didn’t work 

2.) i then repeated the process on this time I tried to clean off the oxydation with acid before adding the mercury and that didn’t work. 

Any tips?

 

like I said the reaction I’m trying to recreate is what they saw on this YouTube video  

 

 

Thanks in advance. 

 Sincerely, 

frustrated uncle. 

[Bufofrog]

It is very difficult to get the reactions started because the aluminum will have an oxide layer that will prevent the mercury from coming contact with the aluminum metal.  NaOH is good for removing oxide from aluminum (as I recall).  This is not a very safe experiment to do with kids in a home setting.  

[Sensei]

What was source of "Mercury"? Maybe you don't have Mercury.. ? if you used broken thermometer (or your seller), there are replacements for liquid metal instead of Mercury such as Galinstan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan

They are hard to distinguish. You need to check and compare properties.

Galinstan video:

 

Mercury video:

 

 

[Hilary]

I’ve seen this  reaction quite a few times but I’ve never seen a video quite like that....

 

Can I ask what kind of acid did you use and how long is your wait after applying the acid before you apply the Mercury?

 

cheers, 

hilary

 

[Intothedarkagain]

Yeah, did you use Muratic Acid? 

You need to apply the Mercury right after drying off the acid. 

Be careful. 

 

[Jojowasaman]

Thank you everyone for all of your responses. 

Ill try my best to respond in my best terms. 

1.) I’m sure it’s mercury, a friend found about 5 pounds of it when they moved into their new house. The house used to be an old homestead based around a gold mine. 

 The bottle it came in is really old and I had to Trade it out for a newer, more sturdy bottle as mercury is pretty scary work with.  

 I haven’t ran a test on it, and so I think I’ll probably do that next, Thanks for the heads up  

2.) I used Murrattic (sp?) acid to clean the aluminum after I sanded it down.  It’s the type of acid you can buy at a hardware store for cleaning concrete. I left the acid on the aluminum a variety of times once it wouldn’t work the first time, but after dabbing the acid up I applied the Mercury as quickly as possible (under 30 seconds). 

3.) my nephews wanted to try and recreate this video because towards the end of the video 

the amount of amalgam is crazy compared to other videos that seem to have only a drop of mercury reacting. 

I’m starting to think that maybe that video isn’t real and it somebody’s idea of a funny joke… But then again what would be the point of that

I can’t even get a drop to react so I would be happy to have  what happens in the other videos, happen with us  

Am I doing that right? 

Ive even tried  drilling into the aluminum Divet while the mercury was in place thinking it had something to do with the oxidation and it still didn’t work  

Thanks again guys, 

Jojo

 

Edited March 18, 2019 by Phi for All
Removed redundant links to video

[swansont]

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Moderator Note

I'm wondering why you newer folks don't just discuss this amongst yourselves, seeing as how you seem to be sharing computers.