this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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Asklemmy

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[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I feel like this is worth uploading to Lemmy. It's an image, apparently from October 1972's National Geographic, of a Spanish miner floating on mercury:

It's denser than lead, so he's just sitting on the top of it like a block of styrofoam would on water. The effect of gallium would not be quite so pronounced, but same idea. This is also why you can't really drown in quicksand unless you work at it (which, if you completely panic, isn't impossible).

Meanwhile, you sink straight to the bottom in anything like oil, with no hope of swimming.