• Question: how long does it take for mercury to rust?

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      Asked by TheToppler 283 to Angus, Catherine, Jenni, Melissa, Waqar on 19 Jun 2016.
      • Photo: Melissa Ladyman

        Melissa Ladyman answered on 19 Jun 2016:

        Rusting is an oxidation reaction between the metal and oxygen and water in the air. Mercury can react with oxygen but it is very slow and takes a long time for ‘rust’ to be created. Mercury ‘rust’ looks different from the rust you see on iron, which is red and flaky. Mercury ‘rust’ doesn’t look very different from normal mercury.

      • Photo: Angus Cook

        Angus Cook answered on 20 Jun 2016:

        If you wanted to speed up how quickly mercury oxidises you can do a few things.
        The first is to cover it with acid:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bkkGb1k7k

        The second is to wire the mercury up to a battery and apply a large positive potential (essentially try and get as many electrons as you can into the battery, from the mercury). I couldn’t find a video specifically for that, but I did find this one which uses the fact that mercury rusts as part of an experiment:

        (This video is pretty advanced, I watched it for the mercury dropping in the beaker…)

        I also found out that mercury can actually cause OTHER metals to rust quite badly. Watch what happens when you put mercury on aluminium!

        (That’s a time-lapse video, the whole thing took about 2 hours)

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