Curated category
Rare earth elements
- EuropiumEuropium is the element hiding in plain sight inside your television screen, your banknotes, and the glow of a fluorescent light bulb.
- DysprosiumDysprosium carries a name that doubles as a confession. Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran needed more than thirty attempts to pull it free from holmium oxide…
- CeriumCerium sits at atomic number 58 on the periodic table, a soft, silvery-white metal that most people have never heard of.
- TerbiumTerbium, element 65 on the periodic table, lights up your living room, guides submarines through the ocean, and was discovered by accident inside a batch of…
- YtterbiumYtterbium takes its name from a village in Sweden called Ytterby, a place so rich in rare-earth elements that it lent its name to four separate entries on…
- LanthanumLanthanum carries a name that is a confession. It comes from the ancient Greek lanthanein, meaning 'to lie hidden'. The Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander…
- PraseodymiumPraseodymium gets its name from two Ancient Greek words: prasinos, meaning 'leek-green', and didymos, meaning 'twin'. The leek-green half describes its salts.
- ErbiumErbium sits at atomic number 68 on the periodic table, a silvery-white metal that almost nobody encounters in its pure form.
- NeodymiumNeodymium, element number 60 on the periodic table, sits quietly inside the headphones on your ears, the hard drive in your computer, and the electric motor…
- ScandiumScandium sits at atomic number 21 on the periodic table, carrying the symbol Sc and a reputation that defies its abundance.
- YttriumYttrium sits on the periodic table with symbol Y and atomic number 39, but its story begins not in a laboratory, but in a Swedish quarry.
- GadoliniumGadolinium hides a paradox inside a hospital scanner. At body temperature, this silvery-white metal exhibits the greatest paramagnetic effect of any element.
- SamariumSamarium, element 62 on the periodic table, sits at the center of some of the most consequential technologies of the modern age.