Tinned Coins

True story...one of the teachers at the Community College I taught at was showing students in an elementary class some elements and one of them was a thick test tube with some mercury in it securely (?) stoppered. One of the class clowns managed to work the stopper out and was going to act like he was swallowing it, but put his thumb over the opening. Surprise, mercury is so dense his thumb slipped and he swallowed 5 cc or so of elemental mercury...

 

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Bet that teacher needed to change pants!

 

Yup, he said his first impulse was to upend the student and see if it would come back out...

 

On reflection, maybe it was rolling mercury around on the palm of my hand to impress girls (I kept it in a glass vial in my pants pocket) - breathing in the fumes and particles of asbestos mat as I cast lead soldiers - and ingesting particles of lead based paint as I decorated them (all this as a school boy) that has contributed to my longevity (albeit with a somewhat addled brain)

 

most LRB's have lead in their alloy and a few are even very slightly radioactive because they have indium in them.