Mercury is still used in scientific research and as amalgam material for dental restoration. It is also used in lighting—electricity passed through mercury vapor in a phosphor tube produces short-wave ultraviolet light, causing the phosphor to fluoresce and produce visible light.
Boundless vets and curates high-quality, openly licensed content from around the Internet. This particular resource used the following sources:. Skip to main content. Transition Metals. Search for:. Learning Objective Identify mercury based on its physical properties.
Key Points Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure. Mercury is a poor conductor of heat, but a fair conductor of electricity. Mercury has a unique electron configuration which strongly resists removal of an electron, making it behave similarly to noble gas elements. These halides can be converted into mercury I halides by combination with metallic mercury. Mercury I halides are known as mercurous halides.
The example below is shown for mercury chloride:. Mercury will only react with oxidising acids such as concentrated nitric acid and hot concentrated sulphuric acid forming mercury II salts with oxides of sulphur and nitrogen.
Mercury reacts slowly with dilute nitric acid in the following reaction:. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer. Please click here to see any active alerts. Elemental or metallic mercury is a shiny, silver-white metal, historically referred to as quicksilver, and is liquid at room temperature. It is used in older thermometers, fluorescent light bulbs and some electrical switches.
When dropped, elemental mercury breaks into smaller droplets which can go through small cracks or become strongly attached to certain materials. At room temperature, exposed elemental mercury can evaporate to become an invisible, odorless toxic vapor. If heated, it is a colorless, odorless gas. Learn about how people are most often exposed to elemental mercury and about the adverse health effects that exposures to elemental mercury can produce.
Elemental mercury is an element that has not reacted with another substance. When mercury reacts with another substance, it forms a compound, such as inorganic mercury salts or methylmercury. In its inorganic form, mercury occurs abundantly in the environment, primarily as the minerals cinnabar and metacinnabar, and as impurities in other minerals.
Mercury can readily combine with chlorine, sulfur, and other elements, and subsequently weather to form inorganic salts. Inorganic mercury salts can be transported in water and occur in soil.
Dust containing these salts can enter the air from mining deposits of ores that contain mercury. Emissions of both elemental or inorganic mercury can occur from coal-fired power plants, burning of municipal and medical waste, and from factories that use mercury. Inorganic mercury can also enter water or soil from the weathering of rocks that contain inorganic mercury salts, and from factories or water treatment facilities that release water contaminated with mercury.
Although the use of mercury salts in consumer products, such as medicinal products, have been discontinued, inorganic mercury compounds are still being widely used in skin lightening soaps and creams. Mercuric chloride is used in photography and as a topical antiseptic and disinfectant, wood preservative, and fungicide.
In the past, mercurous chloride was widely used in medicinal products, including laxatives, worming medications, and teething powders.
It has since been replaced by safer and more effective agents. Mercuric sulfide is used to color paints and is one of the red coloring agents used in tattoo dyes.
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