system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When metal boils, does it release metal vapor in the bubbles?
gpt
If you can get a bubble to nucleate and the vapour is chemicaly stable, then yes. That is essentially the definition of boiling. Liquid metals often have stupendiously high surface energies, so getting a bubble to nucleate in the first place is often very difficult; often bubbles will be primarily composed of gasses that were dissolved in the solid metal. And often the metal vapour will often immediately catch on fire if done in normal atmosphere as the metal oxide is much more stable. For these reasons the easiest metal to boil with bubbles and all is probably mercury. In fact, distillation is how mercury is extracted from cinnabar ore and purified of amalgamated metals.