would you drown in a pool of mercury?

R

ryebread fantastic

New member
ok, i know you would die anyway, because it's mercury, but just for discussions sake lets say you'd survive the mercury part. if you were in a pool of mercury, could you swim in it, or would you just sink? would the increased density cause you to float so well you wouldn't need to swim?
 
Assuming that mercury is more dense then water (I am taking your word on that for my answer though from my memory that is correct) then you could definitely swim on it, you may not even need to swim as you stated. Some people (no offense but fat people, me included) can float on top of water already as our density is less than that of a smaller or more muscular person. The exact calculations to determine what density of person could float on what density of liquid is actually quite extensive and far beyond my current knowledge but yes, you could swim in mercury.

Now, to answer the question originally asked though I am sure it isn't what you really wanted. Can you drown in mercury, yes, of course. Really, you could drown in any liquid. Drowning is simply what happens when your lungs fill with something in a liquid form thus depriving your body of oxygen.
 
very little of your body would actually sink into the mercury due to its high density. You'd probably be able to skim over the top of it.

If you threw a brick into it, the brick would float on the mercury as if it was a piece of balsa wood in water. Even a block of lead would float in it because mercury is more dense than lead.

Death isn't innevitable from poisoning, I think if you had a respirator on you'd be ok, its fumes from lead that are poisonous
 
You'd probably bob around on the top due to the density. Not the swimming pool of choice though.
 
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