Why Can't You Bring Mercury Thermometers on Planes?
Mercury thermometers are handy and useful, but they could be extremely dangerous to bring on planes. We're conducting a survey of our viewers! If you have time, please give us feedback: https://w...
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[♩INTRO ] You’ve probably never tried to carry a mercury thermometer or barometer on a plane. But even if you really wanted to, you can’t in the U.S., unless you happen to work for a government weather agency. That might seem like another weird restriction, but there’s an important reason for it: That tiny bit of liquid metal is fascinating, but really dangerous. Mercury is the only metal that’s a liquid at room temperature, which is why it’s sometimes called quicksilver — which comes from the Old English for “living silver”, not the X-Men. And it’s especially useful for thermometers because of how much it expands when you heat it. It has what’s called a high coefficient of thermal expansion, which means that when you heat it u...
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[♩INTRO ] You’ve probably never tried to carry a mercury thermometer or barometer on a plane. But even if you really wanted to, you can’t in the U.S., unless you happen to work for a government weather agency. That might seem like another weird restriction, but there’s an important reason for it: That tiny bit of liquid metal is fascinating, but really dangerous. Mercury is the only metal that’s a liquid at room temperature, which is why it’s sometimes called quicksilver — which comes from the Old English for “living silver”, not the X-Men. And it’s especially useful for thermometers because of how much it expands when you heat it. It has what’s called a high coefficient of thermal expansion, which means that when you heat it u...
