Melted sword's material

[j d worthington]

I'm assuming you mean something other than mercury, yes? Just to clarify for Xeon, as mercury itself is quite toxic, though not deadly (immediately, at any rate, any more than very small doses of arsenic or strychnine are -- all three have been/are used in medicines, but must be used very, very carefully).

 

[flynx]

I'm assuming you mean something other than mercury, yes? Just to clarify for Xeon, as mercury itself is quite toxic, though not deadly (immediately, at any rate, any more than very small doses of arsenic or strychnine are -- all three have been/are used in medicines, but must be used very, very carefully).

Yeah, that's what I meant. Invent a non-toxic room temp. liquid metal but that almost everyone can recognise the properties of.

 

[Xeon]

Thanks a lot, all! I'll take all these into consideration.

Good day!
Xeon.

 

[dreamwalker]

I'm assuming you mean something other than mercury, yes? Just to clarify for Xeon, as mercury itself is quite toxic, though not deadly (immediately, at any rate, any more than very small doses of arsenic or strychnine are -- all three have been/are used in medicines, but must be used very, very carefully).

Mercury is insoluble, You could drink a glass full of pure Mercury and have it pass through the other end without it doing any harm to your body.

 

[j d worthington]

Mercury is insoluble, You could drink a glass full of pure Mercury and have it pass through the other end without it doing any harm to your body.

Sorry. Wrong. It's a bioaccumulative toxin, and can be absorbed through the skin, blood or gastrointestinal tissue. It affects the nervous system, reproductive system, and several others. In certain levels of toxicity, it can cause shutdown of the respiratory system as well. Concerns about mercury toxicity were the reasons for finding substitutes for use of it in oral thermometers. Mercurialism was also the toxic condition which affected hatters, producing the phrase "mad as a hatter". It is indeed soluble, can also be broken into very tiny particles (I've played with the stuff and seen it happen -- didn't use to be difficult to get; now I'm not sure where you'd find any decent amount -- it's the very devil to clean up when spilt; breaks up the more you try to clean it, until it is reduced almost to the form of a fine powder). No, anyone who drank mercury is likely to end up slightly dead. If not that, then in an intensive care ward for a long period, at the very least. It also accumulates in the brain tissues. Many types of fish and wildlife exposed to mercury are found to have high levels of the stuff in their systems, ingested and accumulating in tissues; the numerous cases of mercury poisoning among fish in bodies of water near industrial plants are scattered throughout the news. I don't know where the idea came from, but anyone who thinks ingesting mercury is a safe idea ... well, let's just say I think they had better have some pretty good insurance to take care of themselves if they survive, and their families if they don't.....

 

[mosaix]

A friend of mine 'injected' himslef in the hand with mercury. He was (and this will make you cringe) pushing a thermometer into a rubber bung. He held the bung in the palm of one hand and pushed the thermometer into it with the other. The thermometer snapped in two and the broken end entered into his hand. The wound just would not heal. He had to visit hospital weekly for over a year to have the wound cleaned before it was ok.

Another interesting fact - mercury attacks aluminium like the devil. Aircraft companies are scared witless by the stuff, so much so that it's one of the things you aren't allowed to take on board.

 

[dreamwalker]

When considering the hazards of mercury, soluble mercury compounds and metallic mercury are very different. Mercury can enter the body through the lungs, through the skin, and via the digestive system. The absorption of mercury vapor by the lungs is an efficient process, but it is difficult to acquire dangerous amounts of metallic mercury by the other routes. Ingestion of soluble mercury compounds produces acute mercury poisoning, but is very easy to avoid and rare. Usually, mistaking mercuric chloride pills for something harmless is the cause (see below). The kidneys contain a protein, metallothionein, that binds mercury tightly until it is excreted. Mercury in the blood has a half-life of only three days, but tissue mercury has a half-life of perhaps 90 days. Small amounts of mercury, therefore, are efficiently excreted and cause no harm. This information is from the Handbook of Laboratory Safety (2000). Some earlier sources claim that mercury is a cumulative poison, but it apparently is not. The kidneys, however, can be overloaded and symptoms of mercury poisoning will then result. The mercuric ion Hg++ attacks the kidneys and can result in fatal kidney failure. Acute mercury poisoning is, however, a small risk and easily avoided. Mercury passes through the placenta in acute mercury poisioning, and so is a hazard to the fetus. Whether there is any danger in cases of the usual concentration of environmental mercury (as in fish) may be doubted.

I should have previously added pure mercury in it's liquid state.

Pure Mercury is one of the most organicily insoluble compounds around. It's only actually because of other metalic compounds in the body that mercury can actually be absorbed at all, if ingested, and when it's been turned into a compound... some of the sympotoms mentioned above occur.

When mercury is spilt in the lab, alliuminum oxide power is sometimes used to clean it.

Some compounds of mercury are some of the toixic toxic around, and via bioaccumilation, mercury vapor can attack your nervous system and lead to birth defects of unborn children.


Thanks for forcing me to back up my previous statement on mercury ingestion, but seriously, "could" is very different to "should"

 

[j d worthington]

*looks ruefully at pistol before sliding it back in scabbard* You know, I haven't been able to shoot that thing for weeks. People around here are too durn reasonable.

Glad you pulled out the material there, and the qualification is noted and makes sense. I wouldn't swear that what I played with as a kid (I've no idea where my older brother got the stuff, but it may be from my dad, who worked in a refinery for Phillips Petroleum) was pure, but I remember it was fascinating stuff to work with, and I was warned to be very careful about it, had to take precautions about washing my hands thoroughly (though, if it had been absorbed in minute quantities, I don't think this would have made any difference, now, would it?), never to put any of the stuff into my mouth (at that age, I was scarcely likely to), etc. And having so many lectures about thermometers and not clamping down too hard on them (with my small mouth, they tended to slide out when I was a kid) from doctors, etc. Also, what you cite above is the first time I've seen argument about mercury as a cumulative poison -- I'm going to have to look into that sometime and see what the consensus seems to be. Anyway, thanks for some very useful and interesting information.

 

[dreamwalker]

Yeah, i wasn't actually aware of this until a documentary on the Great Emperor of China, and how he ingested Mercury tablets (compounds, explaining during the doumentary that pure mercury cannot be absorbed), in an attempt to gain everlasting life... in actual fact, it he died at a faster rate before suffering extreme dementia through Mercury posioning and suffering the effects on the nervous system.

hey, that almost brings us full circle to what we where talking about, swords, warriors and stuff.

 

[j d worthington]

hey, that almost brings us full circle to what we where talking about, swords, warriors and stuff.

Ah, now, that, you see, is good conversation. As Ellison noted, it may hop around like a grasshopper on a hot griddle, but in the end it all comes back to the original point, and you see it all ties together....