Sculpting in Solid Mercury, with Liquid Nitrogen (Popsci.com + BB Video) MAN: There's no question that this fish, at least, is suffering from elevated mercury levels. [MUSIC PLAYING] You probably think that tin is a solid metal, while mercury is a liquid metal. But it turns out this is actually cultural. It depends on where you live. So for example, if you lived on Venus, you would think that tin is also a liquid, whereas if you lived on one of the colder, outer planets, you would think that mercury is a solid. If you cool mercury down far enough, it becomes a solid and, in fact, is a metal a lot like tin in many ways. The easiest way to do this on Earth is using liquid nitrogen. At room temperature, mercury is a liquid metal, so I can easily pour it into these cast iron cornbread molds. But at liquid nitrogen temperatures, it freezes solid. So here, I'm pouring some liquid nitrogen all around the cast iron mold. After about a minute, the mercury is frozen solid, and I can dump it out of the mold. There's no question that this fish, at least, is suffering from elevated mercury levels. It's really a shame that mercury is so poisonous. This would be a lot more fun if we didn't have to take so many precautions against the fumes. Here, I'm pouring mercury into some plastic candy molds normally used for making chocolates. Mercury is actually very heavy, denser than lead, so it's actually quite hard to hold the bottle up the whole time that I'm pouring it. After filling the mold, I again pour liquid nitrogen all around it to freeze the little turtles and frogs. Because this mold is plastic rather than cast iron, it takes a little bit longer for them to freeze, which is nice because you can see the crystals forming on the surface. This actually looks almost exactly like what tin looks like when it's solidifying from being heated and then cooling down to room temperature. After we were done photographing the figurines, we just let them melt. The white frosty stuff is, in fact, frost. Because these are so cold, they condense water out of the air. Unfortunately, avoiding that frost would require doing everything inside of a dry box or argon purged glove box, which is difficult to photograph inside of. People used to play with mercury like this all the time. But now that we know how toxic it is, you have to be pretty careful. Even a tiny spill can be incredibly expensive to clean up. [MUSIC PLAYING]