In article ,
"G&M" writes:

"Smudger" smudger@here wrote in message
.. .

"Sunbeam" wrote in message
...
I want to obtain about 40ml mercury to refill an open cistern barometer.
Any ideas for a supplier please?

or if you know someone who works in a secondary school, they
might be able to help.

I think it's now a restricted substance. A whole generation won't know the
fun of seeing how many times you can divide a globule of the stuff with your
fingernail :-)

The History of Chemistry lessons must be quite strange...

First there's the period when there of lots of substances which
you can play around with, but they just aren't well understood.

Then you move into the period when they are understood, and so
playing around can be done in the context of demonstrating their
properties.

Then you move into the last period where they're all banned
substances and you can only read about them.

I'm jolly glad I went to school in the second period. My first
chemistry lesson at age 11, the teacher was off sick (hum,
maybe something to that now;-). Anyway we sat at the benches
and got out some homework to do from a different class instead.
After a while, people got bored, and started pinging the tiny
ball bearings around which were on the benches. Then we discovered
that if two of them touched, they joined into a bigger ball
bearing. Of course, these were tiny globules of mercury someone
had spilt in an earlier class. I wonder how many of todays school
kids have the slightest feeling for the real physical behaviour of
mercury, rather than what they read in a book? Does it matter?
I wonder if we've banned all discussion of fast exothermic
reactions in schools now too?

--
Andrew Gabriel