Wondering what amalgam appears when reacting mercury and aluminum

A movie to practice 'What happens when you react mercury with aluminum?'Aluminum and Mercury」Is released on YouTube, the strange appearance of products growing like a ghost is becoming a topic.

Aluminum and Mercury - YouTube


Aluminum plate with "indentation".


The dent is to keep mercury reacting with aluminum. Pour mercury into the hollow so that liquid mercury will not flow out.


Since aluminum is protected by an oxide film (alumina), mercury can not penetrate into aluminum, and noticeable change is not observed in this state.


There is no change even if scratches and scratches are made to scratch the oxide film and react pure aluminum.


It is not good to do it gruissly with a drill.


There is no change even waiting for several hours. Therefore, policy change. If it is not possible by physical means, we will decide to break through by chemical means.


First, remove mercury.


Next, drop the strong acid hydrochloric acid with a dropper.


Hydrochloric acid can decompose alumina. By the way, the aluminum body will also erode.


After firmly removing the hydrochloric acid ......


Finally you are ready.


Mercury is injected quickly before the exposed aluminum surface reacts with oxygen in the air to make an alumina coating.


The reaction starts at last.


If you look closely, you can see something very thin like hair.


Thin hair like mercury dripping began to increase. Here, change the speed to 180 times playback.


When aluminum is reacted with mercury, it turns into aluminum amalgam.


Amalgam starts to stretch out perpendicularly from the aluminum plate. At 180 × speed, it seems that something living things are growing at the explosion speed.


Growing up slowly. The surface is pure white due to aluminum oxide reacted with oxygen in the air.


Grow to this height in 4 hours. However, looking at the back side, it is awful.


Pleasure and fluffy.


It was easy to break. The tower of Amalgam at Skusca is just 0.2 grams, and is surprisingly lightweight.


When removing the debris of the aluminum amalgam that fell down in rags, mercury which had not reacted remained.


Collect mercury with a dropper.


Remove visible mercury as much as possible. The surface where the aluminum amalgam "grows" has been scraped off by the reaction.


After a while leaving it, the aluminum amalgam began to be reemerged again. It seems that the mercury that remained slightly in the oxide film reacted again.


Because the base part was large, it collapsed by its own weight before it got higher.


Clean the debris again.


Drop mercury newly ...


This time I will wet it with water.


Including water, Pocopoko and bubbles occurred. This is hydrogen generated by aluminum amalgam, which reacts with water and can not react with oxygen in the air, together with aluminum hydroxide. Apparently amalgam remained in the gray area.


Remove mercury etc with a syringe.


However, it is difficult to completely remove mercury and aluminum amalgam, so I will leave it.


As expected, the aluminum amalgam started to resurrectly like a zombie.


New year.



Before it can tolerate its own weight, a flip.


Cleaning a little by little.


The aluminum plate left ... ....


Cut into two pieces.


It reacted with mercury and was scraped.


Mercury is a metal very toxic to the human body and it is difficult to handle such as absorbing from the skin just by pushing with the finger, so you should not mimic the contents of the movie easily.