Rare Earth Lanthanides are the second bottommost family of elements on the periodic table. They number 57 through 71. “Rare Earth” is actually a misnomer, because all of these elements can be found in nature except one, which we’ll talk about later. There are only 15 Rare Earth Lanthanides, but they can be found in most metals.
The first Rare Earth Lanthanide was ever discovered was in 1792 and was named ytterbite, even though it is not actually a Rare Earth Metal it contained other Rare Earth Lanthanides inside. Johan Gadolin found a new oxide in a metal called ytterbite in 1789, and he wrote about it in 1794. In 1797 Anders Gustaf Ekeberg agreed with that claim. Ytterbite was found to contain a new oxide, and Ekeberg named said oxide yttria.
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Didymia was impossible to separate any more using Mosander's techniques, because it was a mixture of oxides. So in 1842 the known rare earth elements were: yttrium, cerium, lanthanum, didymium, erbium and terbium.
In 1843 Carl Gustav Mosander found that yttria has three more oxides inside of it. And in 1878 a fourth oxide was found by Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac. The oxides are white yttrium oxide, yellow terbium oxide, rose-colored erbium oxide, and ytterbium oxide. But since yttria was a mineral it was renamed Gadolinite by Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Anders Gustav Ekeberg isolated beryllium from the gadolinite but failed to find any other elements that it
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He found several new spectral lines in didymia. Spectral radiation is the spectrum of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation sent out from an atom transitioning from a high energy to a low energy state. Also in 1879, the new element samarium was isolated by Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran from the mineral samarskite. Another new element was gadolinium in 1886 by direct isolation from samarskite by Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac. Between 1886 and 1901, Lecoq de Boisbaudran and Eugène-Anatole Demarçay yielded several new spectroscopic lines that showed the existence of an unknown element. The fractional crystallization of the oxides yielded europium in 1901. Fractional crystallization is a method of refining substances based on differences in solubility.
Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley used X-ray crystallography and made it possible to assign atomic numbers to the elements. X-ray crystallography is a tool used for identifying the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the atoms cause a beam of X-rays to reflect into many different directions. Moseley found that the exact number of lanthanides had to be 15 and that element 61 still wasn't
Vanadium was first discovered by a Mexican chemist named Andres Manuel Del Rio. He sent a sample and a letter to The Institute of France in Paris, France. Unfortunately, the letter was lost in a ship wreck. So only the sample made it to the institute. Rio had first named this metal erythronium.
chemical element here on our own planet Earth. Though it is a rare, unreactive noble gas,
The first major producer was a Bohemian man named Joseph Riedel in 1835. He discovered that by using uranium salts as a colorant it would produce a bright yellow-green
In 1787, an unusual rock had come across the work of Dr. Adair Crawford when investigating witherite, a mineral in Strontian, Scotland ("Strontium | Periodic Table." Royal Society of Chemistry). The discoverer of the element was testing the results of witherite and hydrochloric acid. When Dr. Crawford mixed witherite with hydrochloric acid he did not get the results he expected. He assumed that his sample of witherite was contaminated with an unknown mineral, a mineral he named strontianite ("The Element Strontium." It's Elemental). The discovery by Dr. Adair Crawford was the start of strontianite, but it was not the end of research on this element. Although Dr. Crawford technically discovered strontianite, he did not prove that it was a new element. In 1791, Thomas Charles Hope, continued the investigation of strontianite ("Strontium | Periodic Table." Royal Society of Chemistry). Through his investigation, Hope proved that strontianite was a new element. Finally the element, now known as Strontium, was isolated. Strontium was first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy, an English chemist, in 1808 through the electrolysis of a mixture of strontium chloride and mercuric oxide ("The Element Strontium." It's
The elements were organized by Dimitri Mendeleév. He organized them by properties (columns), groups (horizontal), and atomic number (the number of protons and electrons). This became known as the Periodic Table. And currently there are 118 elements. He also found gaps in which elements that were yet to be discovered were to go, three of these unknown elements were found and identified in Mendeleév's lifetime. The elements today are used in everything and 75% of the 118 elements are metal.
Rare earth elements (REEs) indicate metasomatism in a comparable way. While the anion column shows changes through composition, REEs communicate change with inclusions, specifically, the presence of the minerals monazite and xenotime. “The formation and growth of monazite and xenotime as inclusions are the results of coupled
Recently, Thomas Graedel, from Yale university stated that for metals like yttrium, including the metal itself, it seems inadequate, and nearly unknown that there are any alternatives that can match the element’s effectiveness, and be more greener(9). Surely, many can assume that other rare earth metals, including the family lanthanides can easily be alternatives for yttrium, but because of most be either more reactive, less effective, and even rarer to obtain/ extract, these metals cannot be alternatives(5,9). Moreover, Mr.Graedel, and other sources stated that the world needs to work on creating technology, and day-to-day items without the use of these metals, as it would be much more greener(9), and prevent further over-exploitation of the resource. Despite the fact, the yttrium is a great “greener” alternative for other elements/chemicals such as replacing lead in automobiles, or even replacing elements in medical needles (5,9)
(1) Lanthanides are extremely interesting, and sometimes rather difficult to study. “Their buried electrons cause the lanthanides to clump together in frustrating ways.” (4) Despite their faults, life as it is today would not be the same without them. Although called a “rare-earth” element, in truth, lanthanum is the 28th most abundant, being as common as lead and tin together. (1) In fact, currently known reserves of lanthanum are known to be around 6 million tonnes. (1) (A tonne, also known as a metric ton, is a unit of mass equaling 1,000 kilograms. (5) According to Emesly, although there are no ores which contain only lanthanum as the metal component; it is found in minerals that include all the other rare-earth elements. Rare-earth ores actually contain a lot of lanthanum; monazite has around 25% lanthanum. Interestingly, the metal itself is obtained by the reaction of lanthanum fluoride and calcium metal. Lanthanum metal is silvery-white, soft enough to cut with a knife, tarnishes rapidly in air, and burns easily if ignited. It is also one of the most reactive of the rare-earth metals; it even reacts with water, releasing hydrogen gas. Lanthanum has an extremely high melting point of 921 degrees Celsius and an even higher boiling point of 3,460 degrees Celsius. Additionally, it has a density of 6.1 kg per liter (6.1g per cubic centimeter)
Beryllium is the fourth element on the periodic table and has the symbol of Be. The reason Beryllium is the fourth element is because it only has four electrons. This element is pretty rare to find in the universe, they are so lightweight that the stars can just destroy them. This element is a divalent element which means it only can naturally occur in combinations. The element alone is gray, and strong alkaline earth metal.
Element 95 on the periodic table, Americium was recognised in November 1945 by a chemist Glenn Seaborg who discovered the element as well as co-discovering ten other elements including Plutonium.1 The chemical element americium has atomic number 95 and an atomic weight of 243. Americium is a malleable, silvery white metal that tarnishes slowly in dry air at room temperature. . There are several known isotopes of americium and all of them are radioactive, the most stable being Americium -243 with a half-life of over 7500 years, although most common being Americium -241 with a half-life of 432.7 years, .2, 3, 4. Some of the isotopes of Americium include Am -237, Am- 238, Am -239, Am-240, Am-241, Am-242, Am-242m, Am-243, Am-244, Am-245 and Am-246.
Lutetium is a chemical element with symbol Lu and atomic number 71. It is a silvery white metal, which resists corrosion in dry air, but not in moist air. Lutetium is the last element in the lanthanide series, and it is traditionally counted among the rare earths. Lutetium is sometimes considered the first element of the 6th-period transition metals, although lanthanum is more often considered as such.
Hydrogen-3 is the only radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Tritium was first discovered, unintentionally, in 1934 by Physicist Ernest Rutherford, M.L. Oliphant and Paul Harteck. It was unintentional, as they had not expected tritium to be made by a mixture of deuterium and high-energy deuterons. Deuterons are the nuclei of deuterium atoms, and deuterium is the second isotope of hydrogen. Unfortunately, Rutherford was unable to isolate the matter and the position was later passed onto to Luis Alvarez and Robert Cornog. Hydrogen-3, can either be artificially or naturally made, however it is very rare to be made naturally. Since 1934, approximately 220 kilograms of tritium has been produced only, in the United States of America, however due to the
The Chalcogens group of elements is comprised of oxygen, sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and polonium. Joseph Priestly discovered the element Oxygen in 1776. Priestly loved to experiment and did many experiments of carbon dioxide, even with his meager money intake. These experiments led him eventually to experimenting on the isolation of oxygen. Although Priestly was the
Helium, a noble gas, is the second most abundant element in the universe. It was discovered on the sun before it was found on earth by French astronomer Pierre-Jules-Cesar Janssen in 1868. Helium received its name from the Greek word for sun, helios. Even though helium is so abundant throughout the universe it is relatively rare on Earth.
They now began the tedious and monumental task of isolating these elements so that their chemical properties could be determined. During the next four years, working in a leaky wooden shed, they processed a ton of pitchblende, laboriously isolating from it a fraction of a gram of radium. In 1903,