You can use Earth's Recycling Locator to find a mercury recycling center near you. If you break a thermometer while using it or if you improperly dispose of it, the thermometer will release mercury vapors that are harmful to human and ecological health. Skip to main content. Contact Us. Mercury Thermometers.
Related Information. Mercury fever thermometers are made of glass the size of a straw, with a silvery-white liquid inside.
They are common in many households, schools and medical facilities. There are two general types of mercury thermometers that measure body temperature:. These changes provide flexibility to use alternatives to mercury-containing thermometers. The rule applies to certain regulations pertaining to:. Contact Us to ask a question, provide feedback, or report a problem.
Mercury is particularly harmful to fetuses, infants and children. Causes of Mercury used in Thermometer — Mercury thermometers can be used to decide the body, liquid, and vapor temperature. The advantages of using mercury in a thermometer are as follows: Mercury is a good conductor of heat. So mercury level indicates the temperature as quickly as possible and accurately. Mercury is available in pure form.
Mercury is opaque and bright, so the movement of mercury inside the capillary tube is easily visible. Mercury does not stick to the glass surface. So it can move freely inside the capillary glass tube.
Expansion of mercury is uniform along the whole range of temperature. So it gives the correct temperature. Hence it is convenient to make marks on the thermometer surface. The freezing point of mercury is — 39 o C and the boiling point is o C, So for a long span, mercury remains in the liquid form. Mercury is less volatile. You can use a thermometer to check if sugar is being melted or burned and if hot oil is ready for frying foods.
Your grandparents may have one in their medicine cabinet, or even your parents, but newly stocked bathrooms are much more likely to have a digital thermometer on hand. Mercury thermometers are being phased out as the metal is toxic if the thermometer breaks. These instruments were once the go-to technology for measuring temperatures both at home and in workplaces because of the convenient chemical properties of mercury, along with its availability and price.
Before mercury came along in thermometers, alcohol was discovered as a substance that was great for measuring temperatures. Alcohol expands rapidly when it heats up. Heat makes atoms move about more rapidly, thus increasing the kinetic energy in a substance. The substance expands and moves up the thermometer.
Alcohol was discovered as being great for this back in the s. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit used alcohol to make the first reliable thermometer. The only trouble with alcohol as a measuring instrument, however, is that it reacts to changes in temperature too quickly. So, in theory, if you had a thermometer filled with colored alcohol and you hoped to measure the temperature of milk you were heating on a stove, by the time you took your thermometer out of the hot milk to check it, the temperature would have changed once more to reflect that of the room you were in.
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