How to Spot a Psychopath

On this blog and dansdata.com I've written about mercury, and, thanks to the very independent thinkers at Life Technology, also alchemy.

So I suppose I was just asking for this correspondence, from yesterday:

Respected Sir,

I have visited your website and then I am writing to you. so If you dont't mind then give me some opinon abuout mercury after reading below datail:

I have making mercury into solid shape in Zink and then I want to give it into golden color, I have packed it in a Copper small pots shaped " Male Female" and then put it into a ceramics Cup, then cover the Copper port with wett soil. when I heat it. after heating I made it cool and open the copper pots then I saw that due to leakage the mercury has flew up, only zink was in the pot.

I want to ask you that I want to block the leakage of copper pots so that mercury should heat and boiled but should not evaporates from the copper pots

what should i do to stop the the leakage from copper pots.

please give me some cheapest opinion. I am waiting for your good response.

Abdul

My reply:

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do here, but:

1. If you actually manage to seal the containers solidly, they may explode when heated. Mercury's boiling point is low enough to make this possible with relatively little heating.

2. You don't need to heat mercury much, or at all, to get it to form an amalgam with any of the many metals with which it will amalgamate. (This includes, by the way, the copper from which you are making the vessels...)

Warming the mercury over boiling water should be as much as is ever necessary, and I wouldn't even bother with that unless I'd already tried it at room temperature and it hadn't worked.

The mercury does need to directly touch the metal, though. Mercury amalgamates readily with, for instance, bare aluminium, but it will not amalgamate with ordinary zinc or copper, because of the thin layer of carbonate and oxide (respectively) on the surface of those metals. Brush the metal with a little dilute hydrochloric acid, though, and the mercury will suddenly "wet" it, and amalgamate. Metals that take a while to dissolve in mercury will dissolve faster if you chop, grind or file them into small pieces, to increase their surface area.

3. I presume you're doing this somewhere with good ventilation - preferably a standard laboratory "fume hood", but just doing it outdoors is a lot better than nothing.

You should not be doing any experiments with mercury in a poorly-ventilated area, or science will become harder and harder for you to understand, because your brain will be rotting away.

Abdul replied:

thanks for reply me. Actually I want to speak truth to you for more guidance. I belong to a poor family, and I have got a knowledge to make Gold with the combination of Zinc, Mercury with the normal temprature of Sulphur.
I have make Silver with the cmbination of Zinc and Mercury, the last Step is to Give this combination into Golden color. I have put the Prepared Silver into copper ( Male Female Pots) and then make plaster to copper with mud. then I heated the pots.

result is nearly to success but when I open the copper pots I saw there was no Mercury only burned Zinc was in the pots.

Please guide me if you can help me I will pray for you for the betterment of the world and the hereafter.

Thanks

Abdul

My reply:

Uh... do you mean you're making something that looks like gold, but isn't? You can't do that with zinc, mercury and sulphur, but there are a number of scams that're a bit like this. I'm sure, for instance, that some "alchemists" used fire-gilding, where you make a gold/mercury amalgam, rub that on what you want to gild, then boil off the mercury. That can make a lead brick look like a gold one. People have also hollowed out lead bricks and filled them with mercury, because it's a bit denser than lead and gives a fake gold brick a slightly more realistic weight.

If you think you're actually making gold, though - or have actually already made silver - then I am afraid you are mistaken.

Every possible combination of commonly-available substances under every possible combination of domestically-attainable conditions, and then some, has already been tried by alchemists, over many centuries. And all of them failed.

The alchemists didn't know why they never managed to come up with the Philosopher's Stone, but now we do; it turns out that there are very good basic physical reasons, supported by very, very large amounts of evidence including the functionality of devices which most of the world's population use every day, why turning base metals into gold is impossible.

(Well, OK, you can do it with a particle accelerator, but that requires immense amounts of electricity to make minute amounts of gold.)

Anybody who still tries to make alchemy work is like someone who declares that they don't care what astronomers say, stars really are just holes in the sky that let light through from heaven.

I feel I must repeat my warning about mercury poisoning. Alchemists who decided mercury was the key to finally making the Philosopher's Stone never made any gold, but did quite often give themselves mercury poisoning.

If you don't believe me, I suggest you take your "silver" to a precious-metals dealer and see if they want to buy it.

Abdul has not yet replied. I like to think that he's actually seeing if he really has made silver from base metals.

UPDATE: Abdul's latest, and I hope last, e-mail to me:

Respected Sir,

Thanks for reply me with kind attention.

Actually A herbal pharmacist purchased the that is called " Mercury with copper heated M aterial" at the rate of equal with gold.

My brother in law has adviced me and give me the procedure to prepare the Mercury.

I have prepared Mercury amalg with zinc but when I heat this thing in copper pots the result is opposite to his remarks.

my brother in law said that your copper pot should be leak proof so that Mercury should boiling in it but it should not evaporated or not leakage from this pot.

but I could not stop this leakage . every time all the Mercury leaked out of the copper pot when it boiled or heated.

if it is possible to stop leakage without any welding. then please guide me

I have seen that people prepare many things with Mercury then how is it possible? and how can we control Mercury and mould it in any shape or color.

I will be thankful to you.

Abdul

I told him again that these ideas are thousands of years out of date, and that we now know down to the subatomic particles why they cannot work, and that he might as well be trying to construct a ladder to the moon. I then asked him to think about why it might be that his brother-in-law is not the richest man in the world.

Perhaps it'll make some sort of impression upon him. As with this bloke who was using his twilight years to try to construct a perpetual-motion machine, I hope he finds something better to do with his life. Which could, of course, be drastically shortened if he spends a lot of time in a cloud of mercury vapour.

I wonder if there have actually been millions of people, over the millennia, who've thrown their whole life down the dry well of the Philosopher's Stone or the quest for the Fountain of Youth or perpetual motion. I suppose it'd have to be many millions, if you count all of the people whose extremely demanding religious observances leave them with little time to themselves, and few things their gods will allow them to do in their leisure time anyway. (Even if one agonising ultra-orthodox faith is actually correct, that only makes things worse for followers of all the others.)