Weighty issue
I learned something yesterday. Two tablespoons of mercury weighs one pound.
Stop for a second and get your mind around that. Two measly tablespoons of mercury weighs one pound. Fourteen tablespoons of mercury weighs roughly the same as a newborn baby. Not a premie either, but a normal, run-of-the-mill baby.
It made me wonder what other stuff weighs. What tablespoon ingredient weighs more than mercury? How much does two tablespoons of cement weigh? Or elephants – are they heavy by the spoonful?
Then I started thinking that my turtle Wilson would probably fit nicely in a tablespoon, and I’m sure he doesn’t weigh more than an ounce or two.
Anyway, I don’t really have a point, I was just surprised that mercury was such a hefty little poisonous element.
1 Comments:
That's a very odd comparison: mercury and newborn babies. Was that really the first thing that popped into your mind? I would have thought of a pound of butter.
And I've never heard anyone refer to a baby as "run-of-the-mill."
I bet some people have alot of mercury in their mouths. That's one pound of weight they won't lose until they get dentures!
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