Mercury: The Mysterious Mobile Metal
Neil Dickinson
- Regions:
- Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Essex, Hertfordshire
- Notice Period:
- Emergency (maybe less than one week's notice)
- Type:
- Hobby
- Fee:
- Paid: ca. £60 plus travel depending on distance
- Category:
- History
- Updated:
- 2nd September 2024
Most of us are probably familiar with that funny, liquid metal mercury, perhaps from schooldays, but it would be unwise to spend much time in its company because it can be insidiously poisonous. Despite this, it and its compounds have had a wide range of uses. So where does it come from and what were those uses - or abuses? What is its connection with gold and can it be turned into gold like kings and alchemists hoped?
Views: 399 | Enquiries: 2About Neil Dickinson
My working life was spent as an industrial chemist and I have enjoyed a variety of other interests yet I’ve always been particularly fascinated by the ingenuity and brilliance of humans over history to develop resources and shape them to our own needs, be it for great good or to terrible ends, and sometimes for both, as accepted wisdom and circumstances have often changed over time. I present several illustrated talks on various topics with, when appropriate, a degree of humour attached. I always look forward to questions from my audience at the end of the talks which can reveal some fascinating further details and discussion.
Other Talks on SpeakerNet by Neil Dickinson
- Arsenic’s Toxic Legacy: People, Places, Pests and Peppermints
- A Kiwi in Cambridge: Lord Rutherford, the Father of Nuclear Physics
- Coming Back To Butterflies
- Early Adventures in Radioactivity
- The Road to Novichok: Nerve Agents - the deadliest substances known
- Japan: the last Shogun to the present Emperor
- Japanese Gardens: What, Why and How?
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