- #1
fluidistic
Gold Member
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Hi,
I've seen a very very small drop of mercury in a little corner of a laboratory table and it likely dates from a whole year. I've been told that mercury is quite volatile. So I shouldn't have seen this little drop if it really dates from the past year.
Looking into wikipedia, I see that mercury's vapor pressure is 1Pa at about 30°C. Converting this into torr, it gives 7.5006×10−3 torr at 30°C. Looking to this graph : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_vapor_pressure_graph.jpg, I see that water's vapor pressure is around 50 torr.
So if I'm not wrong, it seems that mercury is much less volatile than water. Meaning that it won't evaporate if I manipulate it and it doesn't seem really a problem for safety when it comes to inhale it. Is this right?
I've seen a very very small drop of mercury in a little corner of a laboratory table and it likely dates from a whole year. I've been told that mercury is quite volatile. So I shouldn't have seen this little drop if it really dates from the past year.
Looking into wikipedia, I see that mercury's vapor pressure is 1Pa at about 30°C. Converting this into torr, it gives 7.5006×10−3 torr at 30°C. Looking to this graph : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_vapor_pressure_graph.jpg, I see that water's vapor pressure is around 50 torr.
So if I'm not wrong, it seems that mercury is much less volatile than water. Meaning that it won't evaporate if I manipulate it and it doesn't seem really a problem for safety when it comes to inhale it. Is this right?