[sdiy] DONT TOUCH

[studio271]

This got me to thinking; for those of you who have never seen or 
heard of a mercury spill (you are lucky, because I
 rarely think for others)...

When I first thought about what happens when mercury hits the 
ground, I thought in terms of it being the same as a water spill; 
everything stays together, very little splatter. However, when 
mercury spills, it instantly breaks into thousands of little round 
pellets about .2mm in diameter. Whats worse is that they then 
proceed to cover the entire area of the surface you happened to 
drop the stuff on. Very big problem. That's definitely why those 
switches are encased in VERY thick glass (plastic won't offer good 
leak protection for the joints to the electrodes, I think).

Just thought I'd offer that little tidbit o' info.

-271

BTW - touching mercury itself will permenantly color that part of 
your skin brown. Not a fun "battle scar" to have...

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: epeasant at telusplanet.net
Reply-to: epeasant at telusplanet.net
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 20:43:46 GMT

>>On Sat, 2 Mar 2002 LBC40X at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>> in regards to my mercury tilt switch idea...instead of 
mounting them to be
>
>>*snip*
>>
>>Someone's already mentioned an EPA superfund site. Just how easy 
is it to
>>break these things?
>>
>
>The ones that I have are enclosed in glass like a small light 
bulb, but the
>glass seems pretty thick. Never broken one though, but correctly 
mounted in
>a robust case should be sufficient to protect them. They are 
commonly used in
>old style furnace thermostats, BTW. 
>
>Take care, Doug 
>
>______________________ 
>The Electronic Peasant 
>
>www.electronicpeasant.com 
>
 

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