Quicksilver

In another of my wanderings through the periodic table [link], I started contemplating a post about Mercury - or Quicksilver as it was called in times past.

Quicksilver is a liquid metal at standard room temperature and pressure, the only one. It's useful in all sorts of industrial applications, from medicine to gold mining. It is also extremely toxic.

If you have ever seen a beaker of mercury, you know how fascinating it is. The shine and look grab your attention. It moves kind of like water but not really, and has the colour of silver - highly polished shiny silver that reflects everything around it as it sits there and trembles.

Even a small volume is heavy, confusing the brain to begin with. Lift up a quarter-full beaker and the question marks fly out your ears. Your body and brain do not understand how a liquid could have this heft. Pour some onto a non-reactive surface (glass or iron) and you see the pronounced meniscus, the curvature at the edges of the sample. And with the slightest provocation, the blob of mercury will split into a bunch of rivulets, baby dribbles of silver running with gravity this way and that. Then the rivulets turn to blobs, sitting there, waiting. Gravity likes playing with an element with such a high atomic number.

So here's my metaphor: I think negative emotions can be like Mercury. We start with a beaker of them, all contained by the glass. Then one day something happens, and a little spills out. The liquid metal runs downhill as fast as it can, seeking the lowest point. That's the nature of everything subject to gravity. So we of course go chasing after the Mercury, because it's kinda funky, and all shiny and unusual. It's interesting to see how it reacts to the world.

But then we find that chasing Mercury and getting it back into the beaker are two different things. We can't just scoop it up, because some will inevitably escape. It's decidedly tricky to vacuum or sweep back into one spot, for the same reason. It's the damnedest stuff. The more we try to contain the spill, the more divided and hard to keep track of it becomes.

We manage to collect some of the Mercury in, say, a dustpan, but not all of it is there. So we have to keep going back to find the missing blobs. Suddenly you see shiny specks of Mercury in the carpet, or between the floorboards. Now you realize that you're unlikely to ever completely retrieve it, to put the entire amount you started with back into the beaker.

Then it hits you. Shit. This stuff is poisonous. Hell, what do I do now? I wish I'd never started fooling with this gear in the first place.











Photo from here. [link]

Relationship Chemistry 101

Chemistry was my favourite class in high school. Lessons about electrons, valency and stoichiometry demonstrate how complex and how intricately beautiful our universe is. Plus there was the thrill of sharing the fume hood with Heather Peters. But I feel the knowledge of how matter works can be taken one step further.

Behold, the periodic table:



Incredible how the stuff that makes up everything you see can be so tidily summed. It's awesome, a statement which I suspect will toss me into the nerd hopper.

Notwithstanding, I believe we can use the periodic table as a cipher for human relationships. Let's start with the simplest transaction, that which powers the stars. Hydrogen, the simplest element, combines with more hydrogen to make helium AND lots of energy. We use that energy from our sun to get skin cancer and make summer. Does the idea of one and one making something special ring a bell? That's two people combining to make a family, right? (Note my PC stance please.) The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

Here's another example: carbon. Carbon is the backbone of the human world, for we are carbon creatures. Carbon is getting a bad rep lately, but that's because it has the worst PR firm in the universe. Carbon is very stable, kind of like parents. They don't change much, always take our calls, and will be there when we need them. Without carbon we'd be nowhere.

Oxygen is a special case. Oxygen will bond with practically anything, making it the slut of the periodic table. Oxygen likes coupling - a quickie with hydrogen results in a sweet bang; an encounter with iron is a long, slow affair; and when she comes across carbon, the result is a great big political mess.

Elements combine in myriad different, but mostly predictable ways to create new entities called molecules. I wonder if humans aren't the same, combining all kinds of 'elements' in different and colourful ways to become the individual and distinct molecules we are.

Then again, I might have spent more time in the chem lab than was good for me. Boy, did I ever want to combine with Heather.



More on this topic: Stereotypes Part One, Stereotypes Part Two.