-
Asked by to Clare, Ian, Jess, Lewis on 19 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
-
Ian Hands-Portman answered on 19 Mar 2014:
Pure gallium will melt at around 29 C and isn’t particularly dangerous so you could handle it. Caesium would – but it’d burn through your hand in the process.
Aside from mercury which isn’t a play thing any more, there are metals that are liquid at room temperature there’s an alloy called Gallistan made from indium, tin and gallium that melts at -19 – much lower than the pure metals as they sort of dissolve in each other. We call alloys like this Eutectics.
I use one that melts in hot water called Woods metal – we use it to hold things firm for machining then melt off the metal afterwards, unfortunatly it’s made from a mixture of lead and cadmium so it’s incredibly poisonous
-
-
Jess Smith answered on 19 Mar 2014:
To have a metal that is liquid in your hands it would need a melting point lower than the temperature of your hands. As Ian has said there are some metals, like gallium and caesium and mercury, which are liquids at room temperature and so in theory you could handle as a liquid! If you had one of these in a freezer (that was below the melting point) and took it out and put it in your hands then it would melt in your hands. Not very safe though!
We now know that mercury can cause brain damage if it is handled too much. This is actually where the term ‘mad hatter’ comes from! Mercury was used in making top hats, but it caused brain damage, so the people who made hats (hatters) would go mad. When my parents were at school people didn’t know this, and they used to flick little balls of liquid mercury around the lab during science lessons!
-
Lewis Dean answered on 19 Mar 2014:
Wow, I have learned a lot from Ian’s answer. I want to find me some Gallistan now!
Comments