Ahhh, mercury is another one. The Liquid Metal. If you go back 30 or 40 years, every house had a thermostat for the furnace, and inside a little glass capsule was a mercury switch. Why mercury? it was a great conductor and didn’t corrode, made great electrical material.
The little switch was basically a bubble of glass with 2 metal electrodes sticking into one end of it. When the switch was tilted one way, the mercury would flow to that end of the bubble and make electrical contact thus turning on the furnace. When the house reached the right set temperature, the switch would tilt the other way and the mercury would flow to the other end, away from the contacts.
The mercury switch lasted forever. Like things used to be made - to last and last.
We also had a thermometer when I was a kid that had mercury in it. Not even red - silver. And it was glass too. LOL - imagine people sticking mercury in their mouth.
Our boss walked in one day and my coworker was playing with a ball of mercury. He was batting it and rolling it around on the floor.
They wrote him up.
“...imagine people sticking mercury in their mouth.”
No one was drinking mercury or ‘sticking mercury in their mouths’ - I put GLASS thermometers in my mouth.