Fun story: earlier this year, I brought in gallium to my school because I'd mentioned that I own some to my 11th grade chemistry teacher. Gallium actually takes a long time to warm up so all I actually ended up getting was a small handful of it melted. Still, I walked into the office my biology teacher from last year, the handful of liquid gallium outstretched to him, and said "Mr. Dahl, is mercury dangerous?" He freaked the fuck out.
You're a great creator. Please keep up the good work. I really appreciate everything you do for TH-cam. You've been providing me with entertainment for many years. Thank you.
Heh.. i always wondered why nurses would flick and shake the thermometer in older movies. Another new random fact learned to push out something old i learned in University.. awesome.
Just as the description of it as a clinical maximum thermometer dawned on me... just a classic old armpit thermometer. :) Used to be the only choice here before the '90s, now phased out completely. Still got one though, electronic ones can only get worse, draining batteries and so on. :)
I love that you respond to your viewer's curiosity quickly, I immediately wanted to know why you preferred mercury thermometers when you mentionned it in the last video, even though what I expected was pretty much true this was interesting and I even got to feel like the channel is based on my thoughts for a few minutes !
We had mercury thermometers in use for a high temp experiment in my high-school (300C). Someone left the heater on at max temperature for a while. It burst and it was quite the fiasco. I don't think anyone was in the room when it happened, but yeah.
Probably didn't have enough room to expand, they used to make mercury thermometers for that high of temp but if you used a 100C one in a 300C oven then yeah it'd break.
Oh, I meant that the experiment was supposed to RUN at 300C. I think the termometers were good to 400, but obviously the heating element went a bit past that.
this video reminded me of one of my old history classes. in a hypothetical lesson 5 people were given various medieval "remedies" to try to "sell" to the rest of the class' "ailments". .At the time none of us knew the origins of our cure, but i managed to use the known 'facts' at the current time to successfully "sell a cure" to 28 out of 30 people. it was afterwards the teacher told me i was recommending Mercury as a cure and in a large enough dose would have KILLED most of the people i was treating. as an avid history/science fan 15 years later still impresses me. a bit off topic but i love your vids cody and this reminded me of that
Dude, this vid just told me why do thermomethers need to be shaken. I always thought that the little pinch inside the tube was an error in the manufacturing process. Now I learnt something! And that's not the only thing I take from this vid! Thanks!
I noticed a major difference in temperatures whenever i used alcohol thermometer instead of a mercury thermometer for distillations, but i never really looked too much into it - i just stuck to mercury thermometers to be consistent. Thank you for the video!
when i was very young i wanted to measure the temperature of steam coming from a kettle. i used a thermometer that shows yr day temp with the red liquid. Well it ended badly. For the thermometer. Keep up the great work. I really enjoy yr vids.
This video brought back a lot of memories for me. When I was a kid I loved to play with couple of mercury and alcohol thermometers. I broke one, spilled all the beautiful mercury on the floor, and was just fascinated by their appearance. Glad I did not eat the shiny droplets :)
In elementary school, just, say, 10-ish years ago, one of my teachers found an old, broken mercury thermometer. We didn't have to evacuate, and in fact, he cleaned it up, put it in a small tub, and brought it around to all of us and showed us how cool mercury is and how you can play with it (safely, of course, and also saying we definitely shouldn't do it for safety reasons)
I was really sad when I heard that NIST would no longer calibrate mercury thermometers. I'm glad you picked some up, I'm going searching for my own supply of old thermometers now.
Just opened TH-cam, codyslab uploaded a new video (11 seconds ago) Well that was just the right timing. Very interesting video, now I know why some of my thermometers are all over the shop.
Ace Mcloud I meant the measurement. The mercury based one shows bang on 90 degrees and the three non mercury based ones are showing measurements which are way under the 90 degrees, they were accurate before, but now they don't show the right temperature which ruined some distillations in the past.
I killed it shortly after my last video by inadvertently pulling the cord out from the wall and not realizing for several days after which it had cooled to freezing. I'll start it back up once it gets a little warmer.
Cody'sLab well yesterday or the other day he made some comments about mercury safety which seemed slightly directed at you, and then you just so happen to make another video about mercury. Love it, yall are both great
We had a mercury thermometer to measure fever when I was a child. Or actually we had several. The small droplets of mercury running on the floor quite clearly explained the name quicksilver (or 'elohopea' in my mother tongue, which would be more like 'live silver'.) And yeah, having to shake the thermometer before using it sounds very familiar :)
Nostalgia moment for me, my parents took my temp with a mercury recording thermometer when i was a kid. I used to play with it all the time. It broke from a loose grip while shaking the mercury down lol
Nice explanation! I have always wondered what's the good thing with using mercury in thermometers, since it's toxic. Those alcohol ones seemed to work just as well. Mostly I use digital ones with PTC resistors (and similar) and (for very high temperatures) thermo couples, so it's not much of an issue anyway. But it's always nice to know.
Lol, you are so right about chemophobia. A couple months ago a guy on my school suddenly had a panic attack on chemistry class. The teacher was showing the process of electrolysis and that guy totally freaked out thinking that those bubbles were some kind of toxic gas....
Wow. Learnt something new today. I have been admitted in hospital a couple of times and always wondered why the nurses and doctors flicked the thermometer like crazy. I didn't bother asking as I thought it must be something they just do. Looks like they were trying to reset the temperature reading.
Here in India we still use mercury thermometers for all our lab experiments. Never knew it was banned by law in US schools. Good to know! Cool videos cody. Keep up the good job!
Once when I was the the "german museum" (a museum in Munich for science and technologie) and for their demonstration of absorbtion of IR-radiation on different yet same-looking surfaces they used mercury thermometers. The heater was overpowered and the thermometers were close to bursting, I told the staff and they took me to the back, to regulate the electric control unit. Had a nice conversation with them afterwards :) you should visit this museum if you ever get the chance to, it is awesome, I went there maybe 8 times, and I still haven't seen everything
I just want to say that if you do not go to Mars, Earth will be a better place because we need people like you to teach. You have a way of captivating an audience by making whatever your talking about interesting. I don't know if it's your tone of voice, the way you speak or your enthusiasm for what you do (it's contagious) but I am watching things that I never guessed I would be. I am even watching the bee videos and I am allergic to them! If you do go to Mars I hope you will still be able to make TH-cam videos and that I am still around to watch them. Thank you for being you. John.
I have a mercury maze toy from 1978, very cool little thing. Shame they don't make those anymore! You really couldn't replicate the way it behaves with anything else.
Broke a few of those mercury medical thermometers in my time. Filtered out the glass and had some cool mercury to play with. Yes I held it in my hands and did all kinds of experiments with it. Still here. And not sure if I was lucky or if my many medical problems could be caused by me inhaling or absorbing mercury. ..... Will ask my physician when I see him...if I don't forget that is.
I remember when I was in 3rd grade (prob around 1986). whenever someone felt sick, they would go see the school nurse. she would stick a glass/mercury thermometer in your mouth. not before she flicked it with her wrist however. when she left the room, if you were dumb enough (or smart enough;) to take the thermometer and put it on the radiator, you may have went home early from school. I however, would take the thermometer and rub it along my pants fairly quickly. the friction worked nicely to indicate that I had a fever. however, there was one time I rubbed it too hard, and the nurse thought that I had a fever of 103.9F! suffice to say that after a trip to the hospital, I never got away with it again!
I once got out of a test because of a fluoride leak xD I studied geology and had a test, but in the lab close to where I was taking the test, one of the tanks holding the hydrogen fluoride started leaking. All hell broke lose as everybody had to leave the building (we were instructed to keep 100 meters distance from the building) but being geologists, it wasn't long before someone got a few crates of beer from our student organization and we just had a nice relaxing break out in the sun while we watched the emergency contamination crew fix the problem xD
We still use mercury thermometers in our organic chemistry lab. We basically only have some Mercurisorb around, in case something might happen (somebody dropped it into an oil bath recently lol, it wasn't turned on though)
I'd not seen a maxima/minima one like that. The one I've got has a metal needle in the capillary. It gets pushed in direction but not the other. To reset, do the same, couple of quick flicks.
wacka "That's why Fahrenheit is still sticking around to this day." Implying that that's why they're still around, not to be confused with your misinterpretation
+wacka: That doesn't make sense. Fahrenheit is still used in the USA bc they lag behind or are lazy. Some of the reasons is because of industrial equipment that is set to produce a certain can, such as cola cans (355 mL), milk carton (946 mL), acetone cans (946 mL), paint cans 3.78 L). That's what they print here in Canada but the equipement is for USA england system. Of course, there are plenty of cases where you can buy 500 mL of peanut butter, 1 L of orange juice, 2 L of cola. They don't want to spend money to change the molds.
Spawny eyed wazzock so what is one furlong in feet then? edit: I knew it! the imperial system is a secret way to worship the devil! (two thirds at least)
i worked at a public high school that had projectors and the bulbs often went bad but occasionally the bulbs would explode and the principal would clear the hallway for the entire day and have it cleaned it was the funniest thing when the parents would come in and try to convince the school that their kid had mercury poisoning
We actually used mercury thermometer in our family for very long time. One that you have to shake in order to reset temperature. It was in Celsius since we're from Europe ofc. But now that old one got broke coz it fell down I only got to see electronic ones in stores. And you know what...you may think oh that's cool..but actually they need battery and also are stupidly inaccurate. Idk why they don't have more precise ones for reasonable family price anymore. It's like...yeah everyone is too stupid nowadays we have to babysit everyone or something. It's silly.
Hey Cody, i was wondering if you had heard of Galinstan thermometers? They use an alloy of Gallium, Indium, and Tin with a melting point of around -20, i was hoping you would get one and give your opinion of them. I've only been able to find medical style versions of them, 35 to 42 degrees, but its a pretty cool replacement for mercury analog mercury thermometers.
I remember when I was a kid in mid grade school, I was using a lighter to rise the temperature of a thermometer. I never knew what that "blue liquid thing" was and everybody including my school teachers also assumed it was mercury (because that's how educated we are here, but that's fair, considering 90% of the people back then probably never saw how mercury looks like). As I was heating the thermometer, in just 5 seconds or so, the top of the glass exploded and spew hot blue alcohol on a wall (and glass shards). Even though everybody thought it was mercury, we just opened a window and cleaned that alcohol with our blackboard sponge and resumed activity.
Cody! awesome video, as always! I have a question, I´ve got arround 15 termometers, mercury ones, and some of them ar rendered obsolete because the mercury is separated inside the capillary, i was wondering, how could I fix this? because, they are so nice, some of them reach 400ºC, and have arround 3 grams of Hg in the bulb, I really need them, and cant afford thermocouples... thanks!
Cody, what are your thoughts on superadobe/hyperadobe building? Would you do some experiments and maybe building with it one day? I'm asking that because superadobe got famous for being the "ideal building method for moon and mars bases", and also because I'm planning on building one hyperadobe house.
My school in germany got evacuated once when some people accidentally dropped a mercury thermometer (alledgedly a large one) on the ground in the schoolyard. After that, although they recovered most of the mercury, half the school was off-limits for ~2 weeks (until the holidays) and you weren't allowed to go anywhere near the schoolyard for ~14 months.
I can understand the panic if it were filled with, say, dimethylmercury, a very potent neurotoxin, but mercury itself really isn't as dangerous as people think. Better safe and sorry, sure, but sometimes I think being that safe is a waste of time and resources.
I agree. There are a few chemicals I'm trying to get as far away as possible from - including Organo-Mercury compounds but certainly not Mercury itself. I wonder how much they paid for the specialized cleanup company back then - considering it was outside, it's even less worrysome than the usual "broke a thermometer" incident. But I assume it's all about liability. Nobody wants to take any chances whatsoever or risk some public scandal...
True about the liability thing. I don't know how litigious people are in Germany, but I know that if it were in the US, they would do that just to cover their asses in case there's that one parent who overreacts and threatens legal action.
when i was a kid, i found some mercury in the sink when doing dishes. my mom called the poison control center and they basically told her it was nowhere near enough to be harmful, and even if it were swallowed, it's not likely enough to do much harm (it was from a very small thermometer)
happened at my school back in the 90s. Science teachers thought it was bs. At least I was fortunate enough to have had a sealed dish of mercury passed around in one of my classes before the Hg paranoia began. In science academy I actually got to use a Hg thermometer, the teacher just told me not to let the rest of the school know where he hid the Hg thermometers.
Someone smashed a mercury thermometer on the floor in science class a few years back, we weren't even sent out the classroom let alone evacuate the school. I dunno if things have changed since then or maybe it's cause I live in England and you America but yea... just wanted to put it out there. No hate
212superdude212 wenn i was a kid also someone broke a mercury thermometer, and we were just told not to touch the mercury. we also didnt evacuate the laboratory... i am from spain if it matters
212superdude212 i have legit broken thermometers and played with mercury back when i was a kif its not toxic untit you accidentally swallow it but its vapours though can get in your body cause it is a liquid and evaporation is constantly occuring
Americans - especially younger ones - have this urban myth in their heads that mercury is somewhat the most evil thing in the world and you die when you look at it without protection, since they lack education. It's always fun seeing the comments of those teenagers under videos with mercury. This is why it's good that Cody shows them how mercury really behaves and that it is actually not really dangerous, you can even put it in your hands and nothing at all will happen.
Hey Cody, random question: So I've got some copper dice that I use for playing dungeons and dragons, but I left them in the same bag for a while and now they're scratched and the polish is gone from the corners. What do you suggest doing for getting them back to good condition?
Derek Thomas I would use a soft cloth with silver-polish, or if you are able, a polishing wheel on a benchgrinder. A soft leather belt might work as well, but it might be too aggressive.
Cody, you say if you know the volume of the capillary, you can accurately calculate the graduation in F for a mercury thermometer. This to me sounds like a good future video, converting an alcohol thermometer to mercury.
Remember when my primary teacher in first grade should show how a thermometer worked with a drink straw and a camera film container (that one that is used for old chemical-film cameras that nobody use any more) She had tried with thick straws, but she could find any, so she took thin once... Anyway put some scrubing alcohol and food coloring. First putt it in ice. Having to refill it several times. Then she putt it in boiling water....... and spray painted the ceiling.
Cody's relationship with Mercury is more beautiful than 98% of all love stories in the world
Edu Renesto even better than twilight!
the other 2% is the relationship between Cody and vacuum chamber's
Edu Renesto the top 1% is gravity falls fanfic
Except for his relationship with Canyon.
That's so true. I'm going to write a Cody x Mercury Thermometer fanfic.
Fun story: earlier this year, I brought in gallium to my school because I'd mentioned that I own some to my 11th grade chemistry teacher. Gallium actually takes a long time to warm up so all I actually ended up getting was a small handful of it melted. Still, I walked into the office my biology teacher from last year, the handful of liquid gallium outstretched to him, and said "Mr. Dahl, is mercury dangerous?"
He freaked the fuck out.
kek
lmao awesome. I almost wish I was still in school so I could try doing this
You're a great creator. Please keep up the good work. I really appreciate everything you do for TH-cam. You've been providing me with entertainment for many years. Thank you.
You are my favourite TH-cam Channel!! I have never written that, but thank you for all this great videos!! You're great!
Heh.. i always wondered why nurses would flick and shake the thermometer in older movies. Another new random fact learned to push out something old i learned in University.. awesome.
those mercury clinical thermometer are really common here in Argentina.
woah
Just as the description of it as a clinical maximum thermometer dawned on me... just a classic old armpit thermometer. :)
Used to be the only choice here before the '90s, now phased out completely. Still got one though, electronic ones can only get worse, draining batteries and so on. :)
CaptainTruth It basically "resets" it.
It pulls mercury into bowl,starting the measuring from 0.
SilenT●CSGO & More! Yeah no shit captain obvious. Watch the video.
loving the high volume of videos you're putting out, keep up the great work!
After seeing you got these the other day I started looking them up. What a lucky score.
I love that you respond to your viewer's curiosity quickly, I immediately wanted to know why you preferred mercury thermometers when you mentionned it in the last video, even though what I expected was pretty much true this was interesting and I even got to feel like the channel is based on my thoughts for a few minutes !
We had mercury thermometers in use for a high temp experiment in my high-school (300C). Someone left the heater on at max temperature for a while. It burst and it was quite the fiasco. I don't think anyone was in the room when it happened, but yeah.
Probably didn't have enough room to expand, they used to make mercury thermometers for that high of temp but if you used a 100C one in a 300C oven then yeah it'd break.
Oh, I meant that the experiment was supposed to RUN at 300C. I think the termometers were good to 400, but obviously the heating element went a bit past that.
Keep up the good work cody. Your vids are always a good watch.
this video reminded me of one of my old history classes. in a hypothetical lesson 5 people were given various medieval "remedies" to try to "sell" to the rest of the class' "ailments". .At the time none of us knew the origins of our cure, but i managed to use the known 'facts' at the current time to successfully "sell a cure" to 28 out of 30 people. it was afterwards the teacher told me i was recommending Mercury as a cure and in a large enough dose would have KILLED most of the people i was treating. as an avid history/science fan 15 years later still impresses me. a bit off topic but i love your vids cody and this reminded me of that
Dude, this vid just told me why do thermomethers need to be shaken. I always thought that the little pinch inside the tube was an error in the manufacturing process. Now I learnt something! And that's not the only thing I take from this vid! Thanks!
I love your videos cody. you seriously remind me of watching mr. wizard when i was a kid.
I noticed a major difference in temperatures whenever i used alcohol thermometer instead of a mercury thermometer for distillations, but i never really looked too much into it - i just stuck to mercury thermometers to be consistent. Thank you for the video!
the next week part is really cool it give you a little hint and something to think about over the week
Hey cody, you're awesome. Keep up the good work
Loving the frequent uploads!
Hey Cody. Appreciate the Celsius mentions.
when i was very young i wanted to measure the temperature of steam coming from a kettle. i used a thermometer that shows yr day temp with the red liquid.
Well it ended badly. For the thermometer.
Keep up the great work. I really enjoy yr vids.
Thank you for increasing my knowledge every day. And for making it so easy for a "non science" person like myself to understand!
I live in Russia and we use Mercury thermometers for measuring body temperature when sick.
We do that too , in Bangladesh
OOOOOOOOOO i was actually waiting for somthing like this cody thanks!
This video brought back a lot of memories for me. When I was a kid I loved to play with couple of mercury and alcohol thermometers. I broke one, spilled all the beautiful mercury on the floor, and was just fascinated by their appearance. Glad I did not eat the shiny droplets :)
In elementary school, just, say, 10-ish years ago, one of my teachers found an old, broken mercury thermometer. We didn't have to evacuate, and in fact, he cleaned it up, put it in a small tub, and brought it around to all of us and showed us how cool mercury is and how you can play with it (safely, of course, and also saying we definitely shouldn't do it for safety reasons)
Why I love Cody. Has the Utah accent. Merery. I'm from Layton, aka Layon. Love you're vids Cody!
Wow i really was absorbed in this video. Well done with it!
I was really sad when I heard that NIST would no longer calibrate mercury thermometers. I'm glad you picked some up, I'm going searching for my own supply of old thermometers now.
Love You Cody! You have such great videos. You look great with the long hair and without glasses!
Loving the new schedule Cody, but don't overwork yourself!
so cool. love all your videos
Just opened TH-cam, codyslab uploaded a new video (11 seconds ago) Well that was just the right timing.
Very interesting video, now I know why some of my thermometers are all over the shop.
Drakkar Calethiel i really can not figure out what you are trying to say
Ace Mcloud I just opened the youtube app and the first video on the "homescreen" was this one which got uploaded 11 seconds ago.
Drakkar Calethiel i ment about your thermometers being soread around the shop
Ace Mcloud I meant the measurement. The mercury based one shows bang on 90 degrees and the three non mercury based ones are showing measurements which are way under the 90 degrees, they were accurate before, but now they don't show the right temperature which ruined some distillations in the past.
Any updates on the anaerobic digester?
I would also like to see an update on that!
I killed it shortly after my last video by inadvertently pulling the cord out from the wall and not realizing for several days after which it had cooled to freezing. I'll start it back up once it gets a little warmer.
Cody you spoil us 4 videos in one day!!!
I remember my temp being taken by nurses back in the late 60's and 70's and they would shake it down like that! Memories!
I'm loving this run of short, low-production-time videos. Is Cody clearing out an archive of cool old footage or what? Keep it up!
Once again a great video, thanks :)
I feel like you and Ave are having a low key, passive back and forth debate about Mercury's danger
we kinda are actually.
Cody'sLab well yesterday or the other day he made some comments about mercury safety which seemed slightly directed at you, and then you just so happen to make another video about mercury. Love it, yall are both great
Cody'sLab drink more heavy metals you coward!!
Drink molten copper or no balls
AvE and codys lab the 2 best channels on the TH-cam
We had a mercury thermometer to measure fever when I was a child. Or actually we had several. The small droplets of mercury running on the floor quite clearly explained the name quicksilver (or 'elohopea' in my mother tongue, which would be more like 'live silver'.) And yeah, having to shake the thermometer before using it sounds very familiar :)
Nostalgia moment for me, my parents took my temp with a mercury recording thermometer when i was a kid. I used to play with it all the time. It broke from a loose grip while shaking the mercury down lol
it is very satisfying when you use the uncertain significant figure over rounding in your measurements.
the" next week on Cody's lab" is a nice touch.
Nice explanation!
I have always wondered what's the good thing with using mercury in thermometers, since it's toxic. Those alcohol ones seemed to work just as well. Mostly I use digital ones with PTC resistors (and similar) and (for very high temperatures) thermo couples, so it's not much of an issue anyway. But it's always nice to know.
very good explanation, sir. thanks.
Lol, you are so right about chemophobia. A couple months ago a guy on my school suddenly had a panic attack on chemistry class. The teacher was showing the process of electrolysis and that guy totally freaked out thinking that those bubbles were some kind of toxic gas....
Wow. Learnt something new today. I have been admitted in hospital a couple of times and always wondered why the nurses and doctors flicked the thermometer like crazy. I didn't bother asking as I thought it must be something they just do. Looks like they were trying to reset the temperature reading.
Here in India we still use mercury thermometers for all our lab experiments. Never knew it was banned by law in US schools. Good to know!
Cool videos cody. Keep up the good job!
I just wanted to say that i love your channel, and it inspires all of us... better post this since i'm early LMAO
Cool demonstration
We had clinical thermometer like that in my family as far as I can remember and it works far better than the other ones that we have
In school at APG Maryland, it was break the Tritium night sight on the 60mm mortar.
Cody is on fire this week
I just love how Cody is talking about how he is sad that the thing he is holding is illegal to hold
Cody has shown me the true value of mercury
good guy cody. such a good guy , the goodest!!
Once when I was the the "german museum" (a museum in Munich for science and technologie) and for their demonstration of absorbtion of IR-radiation on different yet same-looking surfaces they used mercury thermometers. The heater was overpowered and the thermometers were close to bursting, I told the staff and they took me to the back, to regulate the electric control unit. Had a nice conversation with them afterwards :)
you should visit this museum if you ever get the chance to, it is awesome, I went there maybe 8 times, and I still haven't seen everything
I never realised that thermometers where so interesting, thanks!
We had a clinical mercury thermometer when I was little (only thermometer that we would use). Never really thought about the inner workings :O
I just want to say that if you do not go to Mars, Earth will be a better place because we need people like you to teach. You have a way of captivating an audience by making whatever your talking about interesting. I don't know if it's your tone of voice, the way you speak or your enthusiasm for what you do (it's contagious) but I am watching things that I never guessed I would be. I am even watching the bee videos and I am allergic to them! If you do go to Mars I hope you will still be able to make TH-cam videos and that I am still around to watch them. Thank you for being you. John.
That's all we had when I was growing up, the mercury thermometer. I never even knew they made that kind of thermometers using other kinds of liquids
What do you think of electronic instant read thermometers?
BTW, thanks for all the great vids. I have learned so much from you.
I have a mercury maze toy from 1978, very cool little thing. Shame they don't make those anymore! You really couldn't replicate the way it behaves with anything else.
Broke a few of those mercury medical thermometers in my time. Filtered out the glass and had some cool mercury to play with. Yes I held it in my hands and did all kinds of experiments with it. Still here. And not sure if I was lucky or if my many medical problems could be caused by me inhaling or absorbing mercury. ..... Will ask my physician when I see him...if I don't forget that is.
@cody, great video as always! Can you share your opinion on galistan based thermometers?
I was actually watching your "Spinning Mercury with Magnet and Electricity" video, when the notification came in for this vid. Coincident?
Hey you should make your own mercury thermometers! That would be awesome :)
I remember when I was in 3rd grade (prob around 1986). whenever someone felt sick, they would go see the school nurse. she would stick a glass/mercury thermometer in your mouth. not before she flicked it with her wrist however. when she left the room, if you were dumb enough (or smart enough;) to take the thermometer and put it on the radiator, you may have went home early from school. I however, would take the thermometer and rub it along my pants fairly quickly. the friction worked nicely to indicate that I had a fever. however, there was one time I rubbed it too hard, and the nurse thought that I had a fever of 103.9F! suffice to say that after a trip to the hospital, I never got away with it again!
Now I know why we wave the thermometer very hard when we were young before taking measurements :D
I once got out of a test because of a fluoride leak xD I studied geology and had a test, but in the lab close to where I was taking the test, one of the tanks holding the hydrogen fluoride started leaking. All hell broke lose as everybody had to leave the building (we were instructed to keep 100 meters distance from the building) but being geologists, it wasn't long before someone got a few crates of beer from our student organization and we just had a nice relaxing break out in the sun while we watched the emergency contamination crew fix the problem xD
awaiting to see the mercury disolving :D
We still use mercury thermometers in our organic chemistry lab. We basically only have some Mercurisorb around, in case something might happen (somebody dropped it into an oil bath recently lol, it wasn't turned on though)
Nice film Cody
hey cody, is the mercury thermometer more accurate than the digital one to measure the body temperature? thanks!
I have a candy mercury thermometer and I have one that checks your temperature thanks for your video 😎
I'd not seen a maxima/minima one like that. The one I've got has a metal needle in the capillary. It gets pushed in direction but not the other. To reset, do the same, couple of quick flicks.
Cody: "thats why Fahrenheit is sticking around"
Rest of the world outside the US: "Whats Fahrenheit?"
*What's
The rest of the world is bad at grammar I guess :P
wacka "That's why Fahrenheit is still sticking around to this day." Implying that that's why they're still around, not to be confused with your misinterpretation
+wacka:
That doesn't make sense. Fahrenheit is still used in the USA bc they lag behind or are lazy.
Some of the reasons is because of industrial equipment that is set to produce a certain can, such as cola cans (355 mL), milk carton (946 mL), acetone cans (946 mL), paint cans 3.78 L). That's what they print here in Canada but the equipement is for USA england system. Of course, there are plenty of cases where you can buy 500 mL of peanut butter, 1 L of orange juice, 2 L of cola.
They don't want to spend money to change the molds.
Spawny eyed wazzock
so what is one furlong in feet then?
edit: I knew it! the imperial system is a secret way to worship the devil!
(two thirds at least)
i worked at a public high school that had projectors and the bulbs often went bad but occasionally the bulbs would explode and the principal would clear the hallway for the entire day and have it cleaned it was the funniest thing when the parents would come in and try to convince the school that their kid had mercury poisoning
So that's why you see doctors in old movies waving thermometers around! Nice! I thought it was to dissipate heat or something. Thank you!
great observation, I never noticed! :)
Um, how old are you? o_O
612 million seconds
We actually used mercury thermometer in our family for very long time. One that you have to shake in order to reset temperature. It was in Celsius since we're from Europe ofc. But now that old one got broke coz it fell down I only got to see electronic ones in stores. And you know what...you may think oh that's cool..but actually they need battery and also are stupidly inaccurate. Idk why they don't have more precise ones for reasonable family price anymore. It's like...yeah everyone is too stupid nowadays we have to babysit everyone or something. It's silly.
Still use mercury thermometers in our labs here in Lithuania. :)
Hey Cody, i was wondering if you had heard of Galinstan thermometers? They use an alloy of Gallium, Indium, and Tin with a melting point of around -20, i was hoping you would get one and give your opinion of them. I've only been able to find medical style versions of them, 35 to 42 degrees, but its a pretty cool replacement for mercury analog mercury thermometers.
I remember when I was a kid in mid grade school, I was using a lighter to rise the temperature of a thermometer. I never knew what that "blue liquid thing" was and everybody including my school teachers also assumed it was mercury (because that's how educated we are here, but that's fair, considering 90% of the people back then probably never saw how mercury looks like). As I was heating the thermometer, in just 5 seconds or so, the top of the glass exploded and spew hot blue alcohol on a wall (and glass shards). Even though everybody thought it was mercury, we just opened a window and cleaned that alcohol with our blackboard sponge and resumed activity.
Cody! awesome video, as always! I have a question, I´ve got arround 15 termometers, mercury ones, and some of them ar rendered obsolete because the mercury is separated inside the capillary, i was wondering, how could I fix this? because, they are so nice, some of them reach 400ºC, and have arround 3 grams of Hg in the bulb, I really need them, and cant afford thermocouples... thanks!
Cody, what are your thoughts on superadobe/hyperadobe building? Would you do some experiments and maybe building with it one day?
I'm asking that because superadobe got famous for being the "ideal building method for moon and mars bases", and also because I'm planning on building one hyperadobe house.
My school in germany got evacuated once when some people accidentally dropped a mercury thermometer (alledgedly a large one) on the ground in the schoolyard. After that, although they recovered most of the mercury, half the school was off-limits for ~2 weeks (until the holidays) and you weren't allowed to go anywhere near the schoolyard for ~14 months.
I can understand the panic if it were filled with, say, dimethylmercury, a very potent neurotoxin, but mercury itself really isn't as dangerous as people think. Better safe and sorry, sure, but sometimes I think being that safe is a waste of time and resources.
I agree. There are a few chemicals I'm trying to get as far away as possible from - including Organo-Mercury compounds but certainly not Mercury itself. I wonder how much they paid for the specialized cleanup company back then - considering it was outside, it's even less worrysome than the usual "broke a thermometer" incident. But I assume it's all about liability. Nobody wants to take any chances whatsoever or risk some public scandal...
True about the liability thing. I don't know how litigious people are in Germany, but I know that if it were in the US, they would do that just to cover their asses in case there's that one parent who overreacts and threatens legal action.
when i was a kid, i found some mercury in the sink when doing dishes. my mom called the poison control center and they basically told her it was nowhere near enough to be harmful, and even if it were swallowed, it's not likely enough to do much harm (it was from a very small thermometer)
Cody, which video was the one where you made a makeshift ballmill with a plastic bottle connected to a drill?
Hey Cody, you should try making your own Galinstan alloy thermometer.
happened at my school back in the 90s. Science teachers thought it was bs. At least I was fortunate enough to have had a sealed dish of mercury passed around in one of my classes before the Hg paranoia began. In science academy I actually got to use a Hg thermometer, the teacher just told me not to let the rest of the school know where he hid the Hg thermometers.
You are a good guy.
Here in Brazil, these flicking mercury thermometers are standard for taking temperatures at home and hospitals
and they cost like, 0,50 USD each
What do you think about other kinds of thermometers like galinstan or resistance-based?
Back when I was in Jr. High School (early 90's) I did drop a mercury thermometer during science class. The teacher just cleaned it up after class.
the bend in the thermometer is called constriction in case you were wondering
Someone smashed a mercury thermometer on the floor in science class a few years back, we weren't even sent out the classroom let alone evacuate the school. I dunno if things have changed since then or maybe it's cause I live in England and you America but yea... just wanted to put it out there. No hate
212superdude212 wenn i was a kid also someone broke a mercury thermometer, and we were just told not to touch the mercury. we also didnt evacuate the laboratory... i am from spain if it matters
212superdude212 i have legit broken thermometers and played with mercury back when i was a kif its not toxic untit you accidentally swallow it but its vapours though can get in your body cause it is a liquid and evaporation is constantly occuring
Americans - especially younger ones - have this urban myth in their heads that mercury is somewhat the most evil thing in the world and you die when you look at it without protection, since they lack education. It's always fun seeing the comments of those teenagers under videos with mercury. This is why it's good that Cody shows them how mercury really behaves and that it is actually not really dangerous, you can even put it in your hands and nothing at all will happen.
I think this come from the weird "anti-vax" shit and thimoresal and mercury obscure propaganda.
Hi, Cody!
Is there a way to get litmus paper give a false reading?
Say a neutral chem reading as acid or base?
What is your opinion on Galinstan thermometers. They're a bit dear but have most of the good qualities of mercury for thermometers.
FINALLY someone that uses metric or at least for this video
Hey Cody, random question: So I've got some copper dice that I use for playing dungeons and dragons, but I left them in the same bag for a while and now they're scratched and the polish is gone from the corners. What do you suggest doing for getting them back to good condition?
Derek Thomas
I would use a soft cloth with silver-polish, or if you are able, a polishing wheel on a benchgrinder. A soft leather belt might work as well, but it might be too aggressive.
Neat video, do you also have a mercury barometer? I can't remember if you do or not.
Cody, you say if you know the volume of the capillary, you can accurately calculate the graduation in F for a mercury thermometer. This to me sounds like a good future video, converting an alcohol thermometer to mercury.
Remember when my primary teacher in first grade should show how a thermometer worked with a drink straw and a camera film container (that one that is used for old chemical-film cameras that nobody use any more)
She had tried with thick straws, but she could find any, so she took thin once...
Anyway put some scrubing alcohol and food coloring. First putt it in ice. Having to refill it several times. Then she putt it in boiling water....... and spray painted the ceiling.