RE: Mercury - not Tesla Coiling!

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006, Tesla list wrote:

> You are looking at refraction as much as density.

Wrong.  Try the demonstration yourself.  There simply aren't any
confounding artifacts caused by refractive shadows or by water vapor
shadows.  Once you set up the demonstration, the "mercury vapor shadows"
are fairly easy to create and observe, much like looking at shadows of
smoke from smouldering incense sticks.

Here's an analogy:  shine a visible fluorescent lamp on a wall, then hold
up your warm hand and see the warm rising air makes any refractive
shadows.  Nope, aren't any.  To create those shadows you need either a
point source such as an arc lamp or laser, or a slit source using a couple
of razor blades.  And even then those shadows are very hard to see without
using a full Schelerien setup with a concave mirror and a second optical
slit.  A visible fluorescent tube is way too big, and a shortwave UV lamp
is roughly the same shape: not a slit source.


> If there was that much mercury coming off the tooth and if they were
> saying that it was categorically __not__ water vapor, why didn't they
> re-do the test and heat the tooth in a dry oven instead of soaking it in
> hot water.

What's missing from their video was a shot of their actual setup...
and they didn't give us a parts list to let doubters duplicate the test on
their own.


> Besides, as I said before, with a well-made amalgam, there is no free
> Mercury and no free Silver to speak of.  A simple point of inorganic
> chemical fact.

When someone starts making flat assertions more than once, and calling
them "facts" but without supporting them in other ways, I become
suspicious.   Skepticism swings both ways.

Also... *if* a typical amalgam sample was used in the video, and not a
"badly made" one, then their demonstration proves you wrong.

  "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" - Feynman

If the experts say that dental amalgam cannot outgas, yet simple tests
show that it does outgas, then the experts are wrong.


> People are making serious $$$ by scaring people into having unnecessary
> dental work.

That's a good point.  But why be so certain that those people aren't
genuine whistleblowers with real data?  Don't leap to conclusions.

How do we separate the new-age scare-mongers from the valid whistleblowers
like those who pointed out the health problems caused by phosphorus, and
asbestos, and beryllium oxide?  Experimental evidence, of course.  The
simpler the experiment, the better.   If evidence shows that a genuine
problem exists, while a large number of authorities say differently, then
we should start being suspicious of the authorities.



If typical fillings really do outgas mercury vapor, and if this mercury
ends up on our kidneys, then no amount of talk can replace EXPERIMENTS
which demonstrate the presence of such vapor. Faraday has a suggestion for
those who like to endlessly argue, a suggestion that's the core of modern
science: "let the experiment be made."

...which is just what their video is doing, eh?




(((((((((((((((((( ( (  (   (    (O)    )   )  ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty                            SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com                         http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits   amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA  206-789-0775    unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci