Since the dawn of human history people have been aware of a seemingly miraculous substance.

It was a substance that had the same color as silver, but unlike silver, it wasn't a solid.

It was a liquid.

Ancient people use this substance as a medicine and as an elector for long life, something which they got absolutely wrong.

Learn more about the element Mercury, its history, and its unique properties on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What we know today as Mercury was one of the seven metals of

antiquity. These were metals that the ancients knew about because they could be

found in their base elemental form. In addition to Mercury there was iron, copper, gold, silver, lead, and tin.

Needless to say, Mercury was very different from the other six.

While it was known, there weren't nearly as many practical uses for it as there were for the other metals.

We should start with the tail of the tape for Mercury.

Mercury has an atomic number of 80, and thus has 80 protons in its nucleus.

This puts it right after platinum and gold on the periodic table.

The big thing about Mercury, however, and the one thing that everyone knows, if they know anything

about Mercury, is its low melting point, especially for a metal.

Mercury has a melting point of 234.3 Calvin or negative 38.8 Celsius or

negative 37.8 Fahrenheit. Its boiling point is

357 Celsius or 674 degrees Fahrenheit.

That means so long as it isn't bound to some other element in the form of a chemical compound,

and it's in its elemental form,

Mercury will be a liquid at almost every temperature that we will ever experience it at.

Mercury is rather rare in the Earth's crust, but it's far from the rarest element.

It's more abundant than silver, gold, or platinum.

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