A 50-kilogram anvil floats perfectly on the surface of mercury, because the density of the steel from which it is made is almost half the density of mercury.
damn that shit is light lmfao
Fun fact! Many lighthouses with especially large fresnel lenses would have huge fucking tubs of liquid mercury in the lantern room because it’s a super easy way to make these giant lenses rotate quickly!
Shockingly, however, spending most of your time in close proximity to 500 pounds of liquid mercury is Not Great For One’s Health and tons of lighthouse keepers started to go crazy from the whole. Mercury poisoning thing. Hence why there are a lot of “haunted” lighthouses or wickies that lose it and maybe do a bit of manslaughter.
Anyway, people saw a bunch of lighthouse keepers go crazy and get sick and got empirical evidence that it was in fact related to the 500 pound mercury bath they have to visit every day and then they decided nah it’s fine actually. So we’ve kept the liquid mercury thing and I think that’s beautiful
I love how it is so dense it does not "wet" the anvil, the drops all run and leave with nothing behind them unlike water, oil, sauce... it's super satisfying it's like in cartoons
