Sci Tidbits: Science for everyday life: Neodymium - Element of the Week from 10/19-10/26

Friday, October 26, 2012

Neodymium - Element of the Week from 10/19-10/26

Neodymium, element number 60, was discovered in 1885 by the Austrian chemist Carl F. Auer von Welsbach. He was able to separate Neodymium from and another element from a substance known as didymium. It is a metallic Lanthanoid,, and is a rare-earth element. The name Neodymium comes from the Greek words "neos didymos" meaning new twin. It's melting point is 1024 C and the boiling point is 3074 C.

Neodymium is considered a rare earth element, but is still found in amounts of 4.15×10¹ milligrams per kilogram in the Earth's crust, which is the second highest among rare-earth elements. It is never found by itself, but rather in different ores. The main mining areas are China, the United States, Brazil, and several others.

It is most commonly added to glass and gives the glass a violet, red, gray color. Is made to use some light bulbs. The other common use for Neodymium is in permanent magnets. Neodymium magnets are the strongest permanent magnets available on the market. These permanent magnets are used in things such as headphones, microphones, and in some computer parts. Neodymium doped glass is also used in some lasers.

Read more - here.

1 comment:

UnknownOctober 28, 2012 at 2:11 AM
We are using neodymium in a synchrotron experiment next week. It's timely that you should choose it as your element of the week.
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In honor of one of my best friends (see above), the first element I have chosen to highlight after my long absence is... Lutetium.

Lutetium is element number 71, and the smallest of the lanthanide series. It was the last natural rare earth metal to be discovered, and is monoisotopic.

This element has a long and convoluted history, so here is a sequential list of events.

1. Gadolinite, a mineral, was discovered in a quarry near Ytterby, Sweden

2. Carl Gustaf Mosander, a Swedish chemist, separates gadolinite into three different materials - yttria, erbia, and terbia

3. By 1878, erbia and terbia switched names

4. In the same year, a Swiss chemist, Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac discovered that erbia was actually two compounds - one still named erbia and the other named ytterbia (believed to be a new element - ytterbium)

5. Scientists had problems determining the properties of ytterbium, so...

6. In 1907, a French chemist, Georges Urbain, and a German chemist, Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach, both were able to separate ytterbium into two elements

7. There were two sets of names: neoytterbium and lutecium (Urbain) and albebaranium and cassiopium (Welsbach)

8. Urbain got the credit for the discoveries, and the names changed to became ytterbium and lutetium

Whew. Another chemist, this time of British origin, named Charles James, isolated lutetium around the same time as Urbain and Welbash, and also patented a method of isolating rare earth metals, bromate fractional crystallization, that was widely used until the 1940s.

Not surprisingly, lutetium is one of the most difficult elements to prepare, as it is extremely difficult to separate from other rare earth elements. All of these factors result in a very rare and expensive pure metal, and thus there are few commercial uses for lutetium. One use of lutetium is in petroleum cracking in refineries (the process of breaking long hydrocarbons chains into small ones). The radioactive isotope, Lutetium-176, has been used in lutetium-hafnium dating of meteorites.

Good overview of element - here