the cadmium vapour oxidizes, 'with a reddish-yellow flame, dispersing as an aerosol of potentially lethal CdO particles.' Cadmium is otherwise stable in air and in water, at ambient conditions, protected by a layer of cadmium oxide. Mercury is a liquid at room temperature. It has the weakest metallic bonding of all, as indicated by its bonding energy (61 kJ/mol) and melting point (−39 °C) which, together, are the lowest of all the metallic elements. Solid mercury (MH 1.5) has a distorted crystalline structure, with mixed metallic-covalent bonding, and a BCN of 6. "All of the [Group 12] metals, but especially mercury, tend to form covalent rather than ionic compounds." The oxide of mercury in its preferred oxidation state (HgO; +2) is weakly amphoteric, as is the congener sulfide HgS. It forms anionic thiomercurates (such as Na2HgS2 and BaHgS3) in strongly basic solutions. It forms or is a part of Zintl phases such as NaHg and K8In10Hg. Mercury is a relatively inert metal, showing little oxide formation at room temperature. Copernicium is expected to be a liquid at room temperature, although experiments have so far not succeeded in determining its boiling point with sufficient precision to prove this. Like its lighter congener mercury, many of its singular properties stem from its closed-shell d10s2 electron configuration as well as strong relativistic effects. Its cohesive energy is even less than that of mercury and is likely only higher than that of flerovium. Solid copernicium is expected to crystallise in a close-packed body-centred cubic structure and have a density of about 14.7 g/cm3, decreasing to 14.0 g/cm3 on melting, which is similar to that of mercury (13.534 g/cm3). Copernicium chemistry is expected to be dominated by the +2 oxidation state, in which it would behave like a post-transition metal similar to mercury, although the relativistic stabilisation of the 7s orbitals means that this oxidation state involves giving up 6d rather than 7s electrons. A concurrent relativistic destabilisation of the 6d orbitals should allow higher oxidation states such as +3 and +4 with electronegative ligands, such as the halogens. A very high standard reduction potential of +2.1 V is expected for the Cn2+/Cn couple. In fact, bulk copernicium may even be an insulator with a band gap of 6.4±0.2 V, which would make it similar to the noble gases such as radon, though copernicium has previously been predicted to be a semiconductor or a noble