When first presented with the jumble of the periodic table, I scanned for mercury and couldn't find it. It is there - between gold, which is also dense and soft, and thallium, which is also poisonous. But the symbol for mercury, Hg, consists of two letters that don't even appear in its name.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Most people who have encountered mercury have done so after breaking a mercury thermometer. And many of us who saw the liquid balls of mercury scatter across a floor or countertop considered the element the most beautiful on the periodic table.
Medieval alchemists, despite their lust for gold, considered mercury the most potent and poetic substance in the universe. As a child, I would have agreed with them.
No element gets people telling crazy stories like mercury does. People have told me tales about pharmacists waxing floors with mercury, mothers rubbing it into babies' skin to kill germs, and 10-year-olds coating dimes in it to make them shine, then blithely carrying them around in their pockets.
Despite its obscurity, probably no element on the periodic table has as colorful a history as antimony. Money, madness, poison, linguistics, charlatanism, sex - pretty much every theme that runs through the periodic table can be found in Element 51.
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