You rush to get a thermometer. You grab one, but in your haste, you drop it. It breaks, and mercury beads shoot across the bathroom floor. Now you’ve not only got a sick kid, but a potentially ...

Mercury is toxic to the touch and would be dangerous should the thermometer bulb break. Another advantage of alcohol is that the freezing temperature of mercury is around -38F, so a mercury ...

Whether it’s a traditional mercury thermometer, a modern digital one, or a high-tech infrared scanner, they all rely on the same fundamental principle: heat affects matter in predictable ways ...

Mercury is a somewhat different metal in that it is liquid when most other metals are solid. It has a silvery-gray color, and although many thermometers today are digital, mercury is often used in ...