Why is mercury a liquid?
Why is mercury a liquid? - Lemmy.World
“Mercury’s liquid state results almost entirely from relativistic effects, said Peter Schwerdtfeger, a quantum physicist at Massey University in New Zealand. Toward the bottom of the periodic table, the electrons in the heaviest elements experience such strong attraction to the atomic nucleus that they move close to the speed of light. At this point, they no longer obey the laws of classical physics, and the resulting quantum phenomena — known as relativistic effects — lead to surprising physical properties. How these manifest depends on the element…”
