Question

both mercury and water are liquids. when mercury spills. it forms small droplets which is not in the case of water? why.


Please answer it's Urgent ​

Answer 1

Explanation:

Mercury does not wet glass - the cohesive forces within the drops are stronger than the adhesive forces between the drops and glass. When liquid mercury is confined in a tube, its surface (meniscus) has a convex shape because the cohesive forces in liquid mercury tend to draw it into a drop.

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Answer 2

Explanation:

The driving force behind minimising surface area of a liquid is the surface tension, numerically equal to the surface energy. You could consider a liquid surface as a surface in tension, rather like a stretched elastic membrane, that is constantly striving to minimise its surface area.

Water at ambient temperature has a surface tension of 72.7 dynes/cm. In contrast, the surface tension of mercury at a similar temperature is 464 dynes/cm which is why globules of mercury break up into very small spheres when dropped on to a solid surface, provided the mercury does not wet the surface or form an amalgam.