Roy Burdon, who acted as head of the department when Kerr went on sabbatical in 1925, worked with Oliphant to produce two papers in 1927 on the properties of mercury, "The problem of the surface tension of mercury and the action of aqueous solutions on a mercury surface" and "Absorption of Gases on the Surface of Mercury".
At the noncovered regions of the mercury surface and of the first monolayer an oxidation reaction takes place leading to soluble products.
Electrochemical reductions primarily of dissolved oxygen on the mercury surface and corrosion reactions of the active metals such as Fe or Al drove the potential of mercury alternately up and down.
The effects of different organic radicals attached to the sulphide group in dimethyl sulphide,di-n-butyl sulphide, di-phenyl sulphide and thiophene on their electrocapillary behaviour with mercury surface and on their corrosion inhibitive nature with respect to steel in 1N sulphuric acid have been examined.
These distortions are explained similarly to the maxima in classical polarography: inhomogeneous polarization and inhomogeneous adsorption are considered as the two major forces causing the mercury surface movement and as a result, leading to the peak shape distortions.
This is the case, for example when insects are walking on a mercury surface (Graham and Cruse 1981), swing duration is not anymore constant, but increases with stepping period, i.e., increases with decreasing walking velocity.
A second NASA mission to Mercury, named MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging), was launched on August 3, 2004, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a Boeing Delta 2 rocket.
This is a contrived nod to that god's role in the Roman pantheon, and stands (allegedly) for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging.Mercury is the innermost of the solar system's eight planets and was, until MESSENGER's investigations, mysterious.
After almost 5 years in development and more than 6 and a half years in cruise toward its destination, NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft finally entered orbit about Mercury on 18 March 2011, initiating a 1-year, focused investigation of the innermost planet.
NASA's Messenger spacecraft (the name is short for the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) launched in 2004 and became the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury when it arrived at the planet in March 2011.
The surface of Mercury is systematically studied by interpretation of images acquired during the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission.
