All,

This may be na=EFve on my part, but is there any form of Mercury other than=
 liquid? =



									Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of=
 piclist@ian.org
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 3:51 PM
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: Re: [OT] Liquid Mercury Source

On Fri, 13 Jun 2008, sergio masci wrote:
> Depending on what you want to do, there is a gallium / indium ( / tin =

> ?) alloy that is liquid at room temp. It is used in "safe" =

> thermometers in place of mercury. It is non toxic unlike mercury. The =

> upside of this alloy is that you don't need to seal it in a container. =

> The down side is that it wets glass so the glass needs to be coated =

> with something to stop it going silver (gallium oxide IIRC).

I actually have some nice chunks of pure gallium, as well as the alloy that=
 is liquid at room tempature.  The wetting problem is indeed why I have not=
 considered it, as I have not found a way of coating anything and keeping i=
t transparent.  The other issue is oxidation which will slowly destroy the =
alloy unless I manage to get it into an oxygen-free enviroment.  Fun to exp=
eriment with, but not easy to make anything long term with which is a pain =
as it's not cheap either.

The weird thing about gallium is it's listed as non-toxic in most places, b=
ut a number of others mention that nobody really knows much about it's long=
 term effects since contact with it was so very rare and it was not studied.

--
Ian Smith
www.ian.org
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