Question

Metal that exist in liquid state at room temperature is:
(A) Mercury
(B) Silver
(C) Palladium
(D) Platinum

Answer 1

Hint: Metals characterize different properties like malleability, lustrous, ductile, and even good conductors of electricity. Metals exist in the solid state at room temperature but there are some exceptional cases which exist in liquid state at room temperature. It forms many alloys like mercury has an alloy named amalgam, and also used in the thermometers.

Complete step by step answer:

• As we know, metals existing as liquid at room temperature shows high thermal conductivity.
• Metals represent the property of sharing valence electrons.
• The sharing of electrons leads to the solid state having malleability and ductile nature as we can see in silver, palladium and platinum.
• If we talk about mercury, it has 80 atomic number and electronic configuration is [Xe]4f$^{14}$5d$^{10}$6s$^{2}$
• The 6s electron i.e. the outermost shell doesn’t participate much due to the electronic configuration, it strongly repels the removal of the electrons, and s orbital lowers the energy of other orbitals.
• Mercury doesn’t share the electrons thus mercury-mercury bonding is very weak.
  Thus it has a low melting point.
  Therefore, a metal which exists in a liquid state at room temperature is mercury. So, the correct option is A.

Additional information:
Don’t touch mercury ever as it is highly toxic and poisonous in nature. It is shiny silver in colour and used in the thermometers.

Note: Don’t get confused between the exceptional cases. Among all the options silver, palladium, and platinum exist in the solid state at room temperature as they can easily share the electrons.