Element Mercury

What is the density of mercury?

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13.546 at 293o K.

Martin17 wrote:
13.546 at 293o K.

do you use °K every time you quote an absolute temperature, or do you just use it here to emphasise you are using a temperature?

Because you're *supposed* to just quote in K (no ° symbol) because it's the absolute temperature scale.

my thermo and stat thermo professor was very adamant about using the degree sign on Kelvin (Big no-no). To the extent where he took off points on tests :!: especially after he spent 20 minutes in class explaining why it is incorrect. Luckily I picked it up when I got my first homework back :o

Worryingly, some lecturers here (a minority tbh) use °K

I cringe every time.

Just sloppiness :oops:

Yeah but why use degrees with Farenehit and Centigrade (Celcius) then?

It's just by linguistic analogy...

Because Farenehit and Celcius (Centigrade) are degrees of an absolute scale.
This absolute scale is the Kelvin scale.

Just like angles are degrees of an absolute angle, 360°

If I remember right, it is "quasi" correct to use the degree sign for a temperature differential even on the K scale. Since it quotes a temperature change, rather than an absolute temperature.

allan_chemist wrote:
This absolute scale is the Kelvin scale.

Is it named after Kelvin...

Who is Kelvin?...

:?:

www.infoplease.com wrote:
Kelvin temperature scale, a temperature scale having an absolute zero below which temperatures do not exist. Absolute zero, or 0K, is the temperature at which molecular energy is a minimum, and it corresponds to a temperature of -273.15° on the Celsius temperature scale. The Kelvin degree is the same size as the Celsius degree; hence the two reference temperatures for Celsius, the freezing point of water (0°C), and the boiling point of water (100°C), correspond to 273.15K and 373.15K, respectively. When writing temperatures in the Kelvin scale, it is the convention to omit the degree symbol and merely use the letter K. The temperature scale is named after the British mathematician and physicist William Thomson Kelvin, who proposed it in 1848. Another absolute temperature scale, the Rankine temperature scale, is used by some engineers. See also Fahrenheit temperature scale

Yay for British people again!