Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)

Re:Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011) by Crito on Thursday May 07, 2015 @02:51AM (#9503623)

> you can just write "mercury" on the flash and you can be sure no-one will dare to touch it.

Remember we're talking about 1940. Whoever discovered it might very well take it off the shelf to play with it. ;)

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Re:Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011) by ekianjo on Thursday May 07, 2015 @02:56AM (#9503635)

Oh, Mercury poisoning has been known for a very, very long time, and certainly well documented since the late 1800s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning

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Re:Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011) by modoc on Thursday May 07, 2015 @03:09AM (#9503670)

And yet my parents (both born in the 1960's) both played with beads of mercury on their desks in school on numerous occasions... It was pretty common

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Re:Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011) by rwmj on Thursday May 07, 2015 @05:52AM (#9504005)

When I was at school (1980s) the teacher had us line up and put our fingers in a flask of mercury. It was a very peculiar sensation. I probably wouldn't want to repeat that "experiment" today.

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Re:Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011) by ekianjo on Thursday May 07, 2015 @03:13AM (#9503680)

Sure, I'm not saying the general knowledge of mercury poisoning was commonplace back then, but in the scientific community it was, I believe, well known already.

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Re:Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011) by pilsetnieks on Thursday May 07, 2015 @04:14AM (#9503825)

It was the Nazi soldier community they were worried about.

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Re:Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011) by Crito on Thursday May 07, 2015 @03:02PM (#9507451)

Mercury poisoning has been known for some time, however people in the general public knowing or caring about mercury poisoning is a pretty recent phenomenon.

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