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As I hold a silvery metal wire in the steaming hot water, drops of liquid metal form and fall into a shining puddle at the bottom of the glass. What was a thick solid wire is now a pool of molten metal. No soldering irons, no flames or torches, just a cup of hot water.
Since the liquid metal is only 144 Fahrenheit (62 Celcius), we can pour it into plastic molds designed for making candles or soap.
In the picture below, about a foot of the wire sits next to a ruler. The wire comes in a thick vinyl tube, so it looks bigger in the picture than its actual 1/8 of an inch thickness. A few inches were melted and poured into the plastic mold. A white plastic coated paper clip was inserted into the mold before the metal solidified, just for fun.
The metal is very good at filling all the nooks and corners in a mold, to faithfully reproduce items as fine as fingerprints. Below are some of the items we cast in metal, using only hot water.
used in the pop-up timers in turkeys. A bit of solid metal holds a plastic flag down against a spring. When the temperature is just right, the metal melts, and the spring pops the flag up into view.
The atomic weight of lead is 207.2. The atomic weight of tin is 118.71. If there were one atom of lead for every three atoms of tin, the ratios would be:
207.2 -----------------= 36.78% lead 207.2 + 3 x 118.71and 3 x 118.71 ------
Thus the chemical formula for the compound is PbSn3. Another eutectic alloy is a mixture of lead and antimony. For every antimony atom, there are four lead atoms. The melting points are: Lead (Pb): 327 Celcius Antimony (Sb): 630 Celcius Alloy (SbPb4): 246 Celsius In the eutectic alloy of magnesium and lead, there are two atoms of magnesium for each atom of lead: Lead (Pb): 327 Celcius Magnesium (Mg): 651 Celcius Alloy (PbMg2): 530 Celsius