Cinnabar island in Pokemon makes a lot more sense now

Here in San Jose, California, we have quite a bit of cinnabar (enough to be an issue for local surface water and fish, as well as being the informal name for a neighborhood) and the little red grains of the stuff are pretty easy to find in some of the open space reserves south and southwest of the city. It was extensively mined, refined, and used in California's gold country extensively to extract gold.

Cinnabar used to be made into a bright red pigment called vermillion.

Now I know where Ford got that interior color name from in the early nineties.

Cinnabar? No, just no. You need a new name, that sounds delicious. It sounds like a sugary breakfast

As I work with historic items I know that there is Mercury in many old mirrors and barometers too, made up until the 1960s.

Cinnabar Elementary School is in Petaluma, CA and those deposits are west of the city towards the ocean

Thanks! In a similar case to Gold, Mercury's liquid state results from relativistic effects.

We have a park called Dreamy Draw here in Phoenix, Arizona. Where they used to mine mercury. Crazy it’s in the middle of town. Now people hike the area.

And it is heavy, too. The river that runs through San Jose down from the cinnabar mine has signs posted that the fish are contaminated with mercury, so don't eat them.

I love this element. I have pounds of it in my element collection.

Mercury is still used in illegal gold mining in the Amazon Basin

Been out of thermometers for a long time. 60 yr ago mom would let us play with Mercury from broken thermometers. Lots. Of fun. LOL😅😮

Unfortunately, Mercury is still used extensively in gold mining in poor areas.

Many pyramids across the globe were found to have pools of mercury below. It has been suggested they were there to be used in electrical generation.

Thanks, maybe you will make one about those white/transparent stones which are often seen in mild deserts? Or love about the stones that become diamonds. Or emeralds.

Mercury has been banned in battery production for nearly half a century. That's a real issue because a lot of vintage film cameras depend on the long life and steady voltage of mercury cells as a reference for their light meters. Photographers who wish to use those cameras must either use zinc-air cells (which have the right voltage, but don't last long), install a regulating adapter (fairly expensive, $20-$50 to go in a camera that likely cost less than $100), or having the camera modified (similar cost to an adapter) to use silver oxide cells, which have the long life but too high a voltage otherwise. Very few thermometers have mercury now, as well; it's been largely replaced by galinstan (an alloy of gallium, indium, and tin that melts at -19C). Tooth fillings haven't been made from amalgam in forty years or so, at least in the USA. Gold mining is almost the last place mercury is used industrially, but it's been banned from that in most of the developed world. The only application of mercury I know of where there isn't a suitable substitute is in making Lippman photographs -- full color images on black and white emulsion, created by interference when exposing an emulsion in contact with liquid mercury. Galinstan doesn't work well for Lippman photography because it sticks to stuff too badly (and NaK, the other alloy that's liquid at convenient temperatures, is too dangerous to handle).

Fascinating

There is a bit of Cinnabar in Gardner Montana.

What a beautiful ore!

Isn't cinnabar also associated with helium, somehow?

Cinnabar is pretty to look at but I imagine that HgS is toxic if ingested

I need a chunk for my collection

I used to live near San Jose, in California, which has the richest concentration of cinnabar on earth!

Looks like Redstone Ore

It’s also used as an “adjunct” in vaccines and medications.

I miss those stores in malls; loved those cinnamon buns

Fascinating. Loving these shorts!

Cinnabar sounds delicious.

The fact that it was discovered in 1500 BC 💀

so cinnamon is extracted from these hotsprings?

Dont forget about gallium

disposed of properly

he found redstone

It looks ljke moldy meat

Dangerous

Forbiden redstone

Do you support watermelon?

In the Antarctica, there is the largest cinnabar depost. That is why Hitler went there. He was trying to use Mercury in a vortex to make an antigravity devise.