• Question: can you boil mercury or evaporate it?

    Asked by whitburndan12 to Rory on 16 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Rory Hadden

      Rory Hadden answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Hi!

      Yes you can! Mercury is a metal element. It is a very strange element because it is a liquid at room temperature (all other metals are solid at room temperature). If you heat it up to 357C it will begin to boil. That is quite hot but at that temperature many other metals such as iron are still solid.

      Evaporation is actually very closely linked to boiling but evaporation can happen at low temperatures. A puddle evaporates on a cold day when the temperature is well below the boiling point of water (100C). To understand why this happens, we have to study what happens to very tiny particles such as elements and molecules and how these move around. It is a complicated phenomena which lots of physicists look at but we do not completely understand yet.

      I hope this helps! Keep the questions coming!!

      Rory

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