Re:Forgot the Mercury Maze (Score 1)

Actually, not much would happen -- metallic mercury is pretty innocuous. I had a pretty extensive chem lab in the garage at age 9 or so, including about 5 lb of mercury in a bottle -- I'd pour some out and play with the loose drops on a plate. Demonstrating the formation of amalgams by dipping a penny in mercury used to be a common chemistry demonstration. Mercury vapor is toxic if inhaled, so heating mercury (or working with lots of mercury for a long time) in an enclosed space is bad. And mercury dumped into the environment gets converted to organomercury compounds (which *are* very toxic) quite a bit faster than people thought back in the 60's, which is why most places treat mercury as hazardous waste: they want to discourage people pouring it down drains. But small amounts of metallic mercury? no big deal.