Tag Archives: Mercury
Why mercury is considered if liquid metal?
As children we ask many things, especially in the school years. Once, while receiving chemistry classes I wondered why the mercury is considered a metal if it is liquid. The teacher in charge did not know then explain convincingly. For those who like me were not answered then, is this story.
Mercury: the number 80 of the periodic table
There was once metal called mercury. Its name was not always so, the ancients called hydrargyros : hydros, water and argyros, silver, probably because of their color and silvery liquid composition. Later adopted the name of a god and so is known today. As a strange substance and due to ignorance of the time, many people used it for medicinal purposes, even to be eaten often with toxic results for people.
After many years of study, science was able to systematize the chemical elements of the universe and created the periodic table. Then, according to their atomic weights each had a position.
Mercury, one of the first metals known to man since ancient times, was ranked 80 and its symbol was Hg. He was considered a heavy metal, which happens when the element has a relatively high density and is toxic to some extent for humans. Elements surrounding all behave uniformly Hg. Electron valent hold together a number of positive ions of a network as if it were, allowing the metals having a high electric conductivity are so hard and not easily melt.