When I was a kid, we used to occasionally play with small beads of mercury when one of the kids would break a thermometer. Nobody told us it was toxic, so we’d roll small beads of it back and forth in our hands, amazed at how heavy it was and how… liquid it is. You shouldn’t do this (but it was a lot of fun).

Liquid mercury. P/C Wikipedia Commons.

We’ve talked about Mercury before in SRS (the non-water fountains of mercury, and blobs of mercury in the center of early footballs). But since mercury is so magical, we return to the topic this week with a few new mercury-centered research Challenges. (These are all things I’ve run across in the course of my reading, which led to me search these things out. Can you figure them out as well?)
Our mercurial Challenges for this week…

1. Mercury is so magical that apparently at least one ancient Chinese emperor purportedly used enormous quantities of mercury in his preparations for the afterlife. Can you find which ancient Chinese leader used vast amounts of mercury in his funeral compound? Why did he do this?

2. At one time mercury was also thought to have nearly magical medical properties. Is it true that mercury was one of the most important drugs that was carried on the Lewis & Clark expedition of 1804 – 1806? Is it also true that you can track the path of the L&C expedition by finding the mercury-laden latrines of the Corps of Discovery as they trekked across North America?

3. Why is Silicon Valley’s local newspaper called the “San José Mercury News”? What’s mercury got to do with the news of the area?

4. Once upon a time I worked as a research scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center in southern Silicon Valley. I recently learned that a nearby state park where I would go for long runs used to be a center for mercury production. What is the name of that state park? And should I be worried about my health after running (for several years) through an old mercury mine site?

This is a fun Challenge. I’ll be interested to see what you discover. (And if I need to be worried about my health!)

Be sure to let us know how you discovered your results.

Search on!