Mercury is one of the most unpredictable elements on the periodic table. It's delicate, incredibly beautiful, but also deadly.
It's easy to understand why mercury is so popular. It's the only metal that exists in a liquid state at room temperature. And it's one of the few substances that reacts with the most coveted metal, gold.
Andrew Sella, a chemistry professor at University College London, placed a fragile gold leaf over a shimmering drop of mercury. Before my eyes, the gold slowly began to fade. Before it was destroyed, the gold leaf curled around the golden spot of mercury like a sheet.
"Now clean the impurities with mercury," says Sela. "You'll see that pure gold remains. This is the strange relationship between gold and mercury that has always fascinated chemists."