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 Tilt switch from old thermostat.
I replaced an old thermostat at our square house in Urbana, Illinois in late 2001, and this is the tilt switch from it. It had probably been there for decades. A thermostat works by mounting this kind of tilt switch on a coiled bi-metallic strip, which coils and uncoils slightly as the temperature changes. When the switch tilts out of level the mercury flows to one side or the other, turning on the heat or air-conditioning depending on the direction of tilt. The weight of the mercury tips the balance slightly further in the direction it went, providing a built-in hysteresis effect.
Reports Kathy Tattersall from Wolfram Research, Inc:I just clicked on Mercury and saw the switch you used. It brought back fond memories of my Dad who used to invent so many gadgets that are now used in our everyday lives (but he never patented any of them!!) :(
Back in the mid to late 50's he made a mercury switch...it was a glass tube with the mercury in it and it was then connected by a long electrical cord to our TV so when commercials came on he would "tip" the switch and shut off the sound!!! He made one for my grandfather and uncles he even got fancy and made a wood box around the glass tube to protect the tube from breaking and the left over Mercury my brother and I used to play with!! (horrors!!) I loved to watch the mercury split then pull itself back together again!
Source: Hardware Store
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $10/new thermostat
Size: 1"
Purity: >95%
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 Vial of antique mercury.
This small glass vial came from Rob Raguet-Schofield's wife's coworker's parents who had it in their basement and didn't know what to do with it. They thought about burying it in the back yard but I took it off their hands instead.
You have got to listen to the sound of this sample.
This picture is out of date: I've since added more mercury that came from a leaking barometer I got at a school auction, and cleaned it all up by using a coffee filter with a pinhole in the bottom of it (a technique I learned from Timothy Brumleve). Amazingly, you can simply let dirty oxidized mercury drip through such a filter, and it comes out bright and shiny. The oxide is left clinging to the sides of the coffee filter. Of course, you wouldn't want to do that without protection against the mercury vapor and a proper way to dispose of the mercury contaminated filters.
Back in 1972 (October issue to be precise) National Geographic Magazine published a photograph of a man sitting on a pool of mercury. And I do mean on, not in. I've never forgotten that photo, and finally dug it up again (from their CD-ROM collection):
Of course, no one in their right mind, then or now, would expose themselves to this much mercury. But, man, doesn't it look like it would be an incredible experience? Mercury is so dense, and clings to itself so strongly, than the man floats on it like styrofoam floats on water. The pressure inside a pool of mercury rises 13 times more rapidly than the pressure in a pool of water (because it is 13 times more dense). Imagine sticking your arm straight down into a pool of mercury: The pressure on your hand would be as high as if it were 20 feet under water. What must that feel like?
Source: Rob Raguet-Schofield
Contributor: Rob Raguet-Schofield
Acquired: 22 May, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 3"
Purity: >95%
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Sample from the Everest Element Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (excepted gasses) weight about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order.
Source: Rob Accurso
Contributor: Rob Accurso
Acquired: 7 February, 2003
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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 Mercury fountain at the Fundacio' Joan Miro'. (External Sample)
In the Joan Miro Museum in Barcelona, Spain, next to a drawing by some guy called Picasso, there is a remarkable object: A mercury fountain, designed by Alexander Calder. Now that's what I call art.
Sadly I have not had a chance to visit this object yet, but I was alerted to it by Alexandra Cichecki of Amsterdam. I immediately started trying to think of reasons why my company should pay for me to go to a trade show in Spain, or at least somewhere in the general area, and I'm definitely going there eventually, hopefully with permission to make a QuickTime VR object of it.
When it was originally installed in the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, it was just out in the open, and presumably people could touch the mercury. Amazingly, it's still on display to this day, but now it's located in its own sealed glass room. I wouldn't be surprised if people enter only wearing elaborate breathing apparatus, because that room must support about the highest concentration of mercury vapor it's possible to have in air.
Alexandra sent a collection of URLs with photographs of the fountain:From the home page of David Eppstein
From the home page of Sonja Kueppers
From the Digial Imaging Project at Bluffton College
From the official Calder website
From PhiTar PhoTos
From PBS The video for this sample is from borrowed the official Joan Miro Museum website and the sample photo is borrowed with permission from the home page of David Eppstein.
Location: Fundacio' Joan Miro'
Photographed: 10 January, 2003
Size: 60"
Purity: >95%
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