quicksilver

quicksilver: see mercury.

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mercury

 or quicksilver

Metallic chemical element, chemical symbol Hg, atomic number 80. Mercury is the only elemental metal that is liquid at ordinary temperatures, with a freezing point of −38 °F (−39 °C) and a boiling point of 674 °F (356.9 °C). Silvery white, dense, toxic (see mercury poisoning), and a good conductor of electricity, mercury is occasionally found free in nature but usually occurs as the red sulfide ore, cinnabar (HgS). It has many uses—in dental and industrial amalgams, as a catalyst, in electrical and measuring apparatus and instruments (e.g., thermometers), as the cathode in electrolytic cells, in mercury-vapour lamps, and as a coolant and neutron absorber in nuclear power plants. Many of mercury's compounds, in which it has valence 1 or 2, are pigments, pesticides, and medicinals. It is a dangerous pollutant because it concentrates in animal tissues in increasing amounts up the food chain.

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QuickSilver

(1) (QuickSilver Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA, www.qstech.com) A mobile communications company that specializes in a reconfigurable logic chip for cellphones and PDAs. See adaptive computing.

(2) A browser plug-in from Micrografx that allows a variety of vector drawings to be viewed from the Web.

(3) A family of dBASE III PLUS compilers developed by WordTech Systems, Inc. In 1992, the technology was acquired by Borland.

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quicksilver [′kwik‚sil·vər]

(chemistry)

mercury

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(database)

Quicksilver - A dBASE-like compiler for MS-DOS from WordTech.