What color is the mercury in a mercury thermometer?

It's a sad thing that the young people of today have probably never seen a mercury thermometer. read more

Elemental mercury is always silver. To get an idea of what it looks like, remember one of the"Terminator" movies where the baddie reassembles himself from globules. That scene was shot with mercury globules. A lot of thermometers use alcohol and a red dye. BTW, its chemical symbol, Hg, is from the Latin for"liquid silver". read more

Mercury is silver and very reflective. It just looks like a line of metal in the glass. If there’s any color to the line, it’s probably an alcohol thermometer: those commonly come in red or blue. Since alcohol is transparent, and so is glass, you need the color to be able to see the level of liquid. Mercury doesn’t need any added color. read more

A standard oral/rectal/baby mercury thermometer contains about 0.61 grams of mercury. NOTE ABOUT THERMOMETERS WITH SILVER LIQUID: If there is a paper calibration strip inside of the thermometer that includes the words “mercury free”, then the liquid in the thermometer is not mercury. read more

Mercury is silver-colored. A glass container full of mercury looks like a curved mirror. Some chemical compounds of mercury have other colors (the oxide and sulfide are orange-red, for instance) but the element is silver. If you have a thermometer in which the liquid is some other color, it is not mercury. read more