Yes. You have to have a patience of a sphinks when working with these. I dropped one and it took full afternoon to recover. No Teflon either. One thing worse are gravimeters which drift just they because the feel like it.
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Boris Mohar
That is correct. Metals are often very good solvents for each other (which is why alloys work well). Aluminium dissolves in mercury. When the aluminium becomes exposed to oxygen in the air, it oxidises as usual, but it is unable to form a protective hard coat since it isn't sitting on a nice, solid base. Since the mercury essentially operates as a catalyst, it can do pretty much unlimited damage.
-Ed
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(You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.) (er258)(@)(eng.cam)(.ac.uk)
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In the aerospace factory I worked in mercury termometers and mercury- wetted relays were banned.
On Monday 11 October 2004 06:50 am, E. Rosten did deign to grace us with the following:
I've also heard that mercury is one of very very few things that can dissolve gold. Presumably, that's why it's used in tooth fillings.
Cheers! Rich
They certainly won't be undetectable. At 10^-16 amps = 600 electrons/sec even a 1 seconds measurement will see +-25 electrons RMS, with larger peaks. That's about +- 4% on each measurement. If you try to measure in 1/10 second it's much worse = 62 electrons +- 8, for a +- 12% variation between any two measurements.
Lou Scheffer
and why gold miners are poisoning Amazon's rivers
In regard to soldering aluminum and solubility: When i first wanted to solder to aluminum, i bought some solder made for that purpose. It discovered that it had cadmium, so i stopped using it. Then i experimented with 60/40 solder, hotter than normal irons, and various fluxes. This was over 30 years ago, and i think the best flux was ammonia chloride. Net result: it is easy to solder to aluminum, provided that one can easily break thru the oxide coating while preventing more to be created. However, i also found that aluminum is rather soluble in solder, and a depression is made where the solder is applied. I also found that once the barrier is broken, the solder can flow underneath the oxide skin and spread easily over a wide area (looks wierd, seeing a moving liquid "lump" under a "scum").
..and silver fillings.
I expect most, or at least many metals can dissolve, ie alloy with gold. As for reacting with gold (often referred to as dissolving), aqua regia is one of the few things that can do it. That said, the difference between dissolving and reacting (especially with regards to alloying) is rather more subtle that shcool chemistry would have you believe (A level only touched on it lightly when I did it), especially when you happen to end up with a eutectic alloy.
-Ed
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(You can't go wrong with psycho-rats.) (er258)(@)(eng.cam)(.ac.uk)
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