# Riddle No. 4



## Lino1406 (Jul 3, 2013)

Know how to differentiate chemically between silver and mercury?
Answer riddle No. 4 on
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gold-electronic-enigma/162208933810735


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## solar_plasma (Jul 3, 2013)

When HgO is shaked together with 2 KCl, large amounts will *dissolve*: HgO+2KCl -> HgCl2+2KOH,
while Ag2O will basically do the same, but will not dissolve but *precipitate* as AgCl


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## JHS (Jul 3, 2013)

no chemical test needed Drop both on the floor
the one with less pieces is silver


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## chlaurite (Jul 3, 2013)

Dust your sample with powdered elemental sulphur at room temperature. Silver will react with it very, very, _very_ slowly (as in, no noticeable reaction for hours or days). Mercury will slurp it up like a sponge almost instantly and leave you with a lump of cinnabar.

For reference, this "test" also makes for a *great* way to handle a small mercury spill. Don't fool around with expensive collection kits and prepaid disposal vials - Dust the area with sulphur, wait half an hour, then just vacuum it up.


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## Lino1406 (Jul 3, 2013)

Nice Solar_plasma (not what I thought). To get "Why is gold yellow?"
give an e-mail


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## solar_plasma (Jul 4, 2013)

> Dust your sample with powdered elemental sulphur at room temperature. Silver will react with it very, very, very slowly (as in, no noticeable reaction for hours or days). Mercury will slurp it up like a sponge almost instantly and leave you with a lump of cinnabar.
> 
> For reference, this "test" also makes for a great way to handle a small mercury spill. Don't fool around with expensive collection kits and prepaid disposal vials - Dust the area with sulphur, wait half an hour, then just vacuum it up.



But then it's still very poisonous, while zinc powder would form much more non-hazardous amalgame. Please correct me.


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## chlaurite (Jul 4, 2013)

Cinnabar (HgS) technically still counts as poisonous, but _relatively_ inert - It has the mercury well locked up in nice high-affinity chemical bonds, and in an insoluble inorganic form at that. An amalgam makes the mercury solid and much easier to handle, but the mercury remains very much free elemental mercury. As an analogy, NaOH+HCl mixed together makes common table salt. HCl+water (or NaOH+water, for that matter) both make solutions (and an amalgam just means a "solution" made with metals) that will nicely eat through human flesh. :shock:

That said, plain ol' liquid metallic mercury really doesn't count as anywhere _near_ as dangerous as most people make it sound, as those of us who used to play with it as kids can attest to. *If* you start _working_ with it in large quantities (especially anything that involves heating it or dear-lord-never-do-this working with any organic compounds), such as gold leaching, you can quickly get exposed to way too much; if an old-school thermometer breaks in the bathroom, however, you really don't need to call in a hazmat team. So whether you make an amalgam or an inorganic compound like HgS, it matters more that you just take basic handling precautions (don't eat it, don't heat it, don't turn it into airborne dust, don't use caustics on it that might produce soluble salts), and _get rid of it_, than exactly which method you use to make it easier to catch those slippery li'l drops. 8)


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## solar_plasma (Jul 4, 2013)

cinnober is more poisonous than metallic Hg....looks like doing it worse

Right, Hg isn't very dangerous, if handled right (keep it where it is, in its bottle^^). It gets really nasty if it drops, hundreds of almost microscopic small balls and you are never sure you got them all, even if dropped into a jar. Not to think of, if it would drop on the floor. I hate it.

On the other side, if you after some month always have sore throat, chronic bronchitis, are less concentrated, headache............you know, you probably didn't get them all. But who still no prob, in a lab where this really happened, they just opened the windows all day after Hg was measured, and everybody got better again :lol: In some 10 yearsmost of it may be vaporized ^^


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## Lino1406 (Jul 13, 2013)

Solution to riddle No. 4:
AgI - yellow, HgI2 - red
fuller details on
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gold-electronic-enigma/162208933810735


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