What happens when you put mercury and aluminum together? I read that ist bad but as an experiment, I put a small blob of mercury on some aluminum foil and nothing happened.

it Should react but it won`t until the thin oxide layer is removed first.

try scratching the alu that`s under the drop of mercury with a piece of glass, that should help get it started.

it will dissolve the aluminium. try scratching the aluminium foil with a needle, preferably through the blob of mercury to remove the oxide layer to speed things up a little.

Just be sure you don't use chemical cleaners like sodium hydroxide because this will eat up your aluminum as well.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gihAT6eXaoc

 

I thought that was pretty cool

Yeah, there's actually a LOT of really neat chemistry videos on YouTube. These were demonstrations you used to only be able to see if you privilged enough to have a good teacher in high school.