Amalgam (chemistry) but can be worked with under dry nitrogen. The Hg-Hg distance is around 300 picometres, Hg-K around 358 pm. Phases KHg and KHg are also known; rubidium, strontium and barium undecamercurides are known and isostructural. Sodium amalgam (NaHg) has a different structure, with the mercury atoms forming hexagonal layers, and the sodium atoms a linear chain which fits into the holes in the hexagonal layers, but the potassium atom is too large for this structure to work in KHg. Sodium amalgam is produced as a byproduct of the chloralkali process and used as an important reducing agent in organic and
Chemical element whole number. For example, the relative atomic mass of chlorine is 35.453 u, which differs greatly from a whole number as it is an average of about 76% chlorine-35 and 24% chlorine-37. Whenever a relative atomic mass value differs by more than 1% from a whole number, it is due to this averaging effect, as significant amounts of more than one isotope are naturally present in a sample of that element. Chemists and nuclear scientists have different definitions of a "pure element". In chemistry, a pure element means a substance whose atoms all (or in practice almost all) have the