Vibrating mercury drop


I grew up at a time when Mercury was not viewed as the major health hazard it is now. In our innocence, the breaking of a thermometer in a physics lab and the spilling of the liquid metal did not result in the shutting down of the building but an occasion to play with the droplets, which was fun.

The high density, metallic nature, and being liquid at room temperatures makes mercury unusual in so many ways and we see further evidence of this in the way that a drop of mercury vibrates at different frequencies.

Comments

  1. Reginald Selkirk says

    I remember as a child playing with a toy that was a tilt maze with a drop of mercury you had to work through the maze without dropping it into the wrong holes.

  2. david says

    I’m sure the shape of the vibrations follows some special function named after an 18th century mathematician. Which one?

  3. chigau (違う) says

    At risk of cross-troping …
    Vibrating Mercury Drop
    is a fine name for a … musical ensemble … of some kind.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *