The Quicksilver

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The Quicksilver

One day an ancient alchemist was sitting at his and noticed a strange

silvery liquid-like metal. He called several of his colleagues over to admire it.

It was passed down through the years, this chemical reaction, that formed this

"Quicksilver" as the alchemists called it. One day a French chemist Antoine

Laurent Lavoisier tested and proclaimed it a metal. And he named it Mercury

(Hg). With strong controversy from scientists around the world, Lavoisier was

never given credit until after his death.. During the late nineteenth century

and early twentieth is when a significant amount of work went into developing a

good use to mercury- thermometers. Before people had been developing

thermometers but they were not as accurate as the ones produced around 1900.

In the later twentieth century people developed a increasing "need" for

pure gold and silver. European and American scientists developed a new advanced

way for this- amalgams. Amalgams are alloys of mercury usually used to extract

elements from there various ores. Then, once the common metal is extracted

mercury is then separated through distillation.

Without mercury our world would be much different. We would have

different, if any, ways of determining temperature. Mercury is also used in

cleaning modern day swimming pools as "Mercury Vapor lamps" for sterilization.

Mercury can be used in both reconstructing and destroying life in water ways

depending upon the attention people give it. We would have no fast, economical

ways of cleaning large pools; no fast, economical way of controlling river

clean-ups. Life in our modern day households would be much, much colder because

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