Has to be short wave. The electrons in mercurys shell absorb higher frequency UV. Thats one of the reasons that when its excited it will emit that wavelength also. To do this one should probably get a HP Hg quartz lamp and a floresent background.

This guy seems alright. 

Very interesting! I guess if you have all that go for it, but I was thinking since it didn't seem to have any practical use it just wasn't worth it.

of course I also built a TEA nitrogen laser so I got 337nm wavelengths bright as hell on command.

I almost built one of these! I have multiple transformers; flybacks and NST's. Does a TEA laser have any application when it comes to radical chlorination or similiar reactions? I've heard if you use a CO2 atmosphere it produces infrared light, so that might be of interest to you.

Timecube, I've been looking for that picture for a while! I think there is even a video of him, but I haven't been able to find that either. Thanks for the post

Impressive observations, seeing the shadow to me makes a lot more sense then seeing mercury vapor fluoresce in a blacklight. If anyone tries this and has luck let us know.

Poison, any luck with getting to be able to try the CuSO4 reduction on some nitrostyrenes?

Probably next month. I'm crammed with work right now.

Hmm, I'm wondering. Based on what you said I'd say you either had mercurous sulfate or mercuric sulfate which eventually led to an impure mercurous or mercuric chloride. The (I) and (II) forms both have to do with heating issues when forming the sulfate, that sorta thing.

The HgO has a variety of color forms based on the the size of the crystals, which if they are under a certain microgram size they will vary between yellow/orange/red. It all has to do with what alkali your basifying with. You used NaOH and got yellow. I used sodium carbonate and got orange. Both are chemically identical more or less with the exception at the rate they crystalize. I have a feeling you just basified too quickly or something along those lines and trapped some impurities in your HgCl2 which resulted in a grey color for the chloride in the end. Worst case scenario you formed the mercurous chloride instead of the mercuric.

My chloride was always white but then again I always used sodium carbonate instead of bicarbonate or NaOH.

OK,

I just found out something that I thought everyone should know because to me its kind of important. I evaportated the HgCl2 solution down very slowly on a hot water bath. As it evaporated I decided to see if any one the HgCl2 was subliming off by putting a clean piece of glass over it and letting the condensate dry. Well this morning it was dry and there was a small amount of fine white powder in its place. This is evidence that as you condense the solution to crystals there is some HgCl2 being carryed over either in the form of condensed steam or sublimination Im not certine yet but seeing as how it was a very low heat Im leaning to sublimination. Moral of the story is BE CAREFUL.

After giving it much thought I dont see the need to create HgCl2. Wouldnt it be more practical from a safty stand point to make the HgCl2 insitu from HCl and HgO. This would eliminate the need of handling the very toxic HgX compounds. Anythoughts on that?

I think this means that when evaporating the solution the vapors should be run into a NaOH wash bottle which im going to do next time and weight the resulting HgO to determine how much is comming out.

There where no bubbles just a real low heat was used. The evaporation dish was placed over a popperie burner filled with water.  There is the occasional mist that comes from it but no splattering from bubbles.

Ha, I had the HgCl2/water solution boiling for a LONG time to drive the water off a few times and I lost A LOT of HgCl2 for those runs. I'm glad someone else confirmed this.

swim had a dream where he evaporated the water on heat to yield the hgcl2 and it was taking forever to evap all the water so swim left and did something else, temp was probably around 80C.  when he came back it appeared as though all the water had evaporated and the hgcl2 in the middle was slightly molten and bubbling very slowly, needless to say he killed the heat immediately.  what he was left with were long shardy hgcl2 crystals around the sides and in the middle was hard, compacted, caked hgcl2 where it got too much heat.  he tested a little bit using this hgcl2 from the center where it was subliming and the al foil amalgamated but it wouldn't dissolve in water very well.  had to add alcohol to get it to dissolve then the amalgam took right off.

Hopefully this was done outside, or somewhere besides where you live?

in the dream it was done outside, at what temp does hgcl2 decompose versus sublimation?