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What
the name means:
Yttrium is named after a village called
Ytterby, near Stockholm, Sweden. It was
from a quarry near Ytterby village that a
black mineral, which was named ytterite (gadolinite),
that contained yttrium salts, was found.
Who
identified
yttrium? The
black mineral Ytterite was investigated by
a Finnish chemistry professor called Johan
Gadolin in 1794. It proved to be made up of
a mixture of many compounds. Gadolin found
that about 38% of Ytterite (also known as
gadolinite) was made the oxide of a new
“earth”. He called this oxide yttria. In
1828, Friedrich Wohler isolated yttria and
extracted an impure sample of the element
Yttrium. In fact, Yttrium is not a rare
earth metal but belongs to the group of
metals known as transition metals.
About
yttrium: Yttrium
is a silvery, grey metal. It is not very
reactive when left in the air. Yttrium is
rare in the Earth’s crust, but it occurs in
surprisingly high quantities in lunar
rocks. |
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