Period 6 element deposited later by meteorites which contained the element. This supposedly explains why, in prehistory, gold appeared as nuggets on the earth's surface. Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum ( < Greek "" "water" and "" "silver"). A heavy, silvery d-block element, mercury is the only metal that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure; the only other element that is liquid under these conditions is bromine, though metals such as caesium, francium, gallium, and rubidium melt just above room temperature. With a freezing
Heavy metals chemistry professor writing in the context of fifty years' experience with the term, said it applied to "metals with insoluble sulfides and hydroxides, whose salts produce colored solutions in water and whose complexes are usually colored". On the basis of the metals he had seen referred to as heavy metals, he suggested it would useful to define them as (in general) all the metals in periodic table columns 3 to 16 that are in row 4 or greater, in other words, the transition metals and post-transition metals. The lanthanides satisfy Hawkes' three-part description; the status of the actinides is not