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What
the name means:
Cerium was named after the very first
asteroid, sighted in 1801 and named Ceres.
Ceres had, in its turn, been named after
the Roman goddess of corn and harvest.
Who
identified
cerium? Cerium
was identified by the Swedish scientists,
Wilhelm Hisinger and Jöns Jakob Berzelius,
and the German scientist, Martin Klaproth
in 1803.
About
cerium:
Cerium is one of the members of the group
of elements know as the rare earths. There
are sixteen elements in this group. The
word “earth” was used to describe the oxide
of metals. The word “rare” was applied to
these sixteen elements because it was
believed that their metal oxides were not
present in any great quantity in the
Earth’s crust. In fact, for most of the
elements in this group, this is not the
case. Their metal oxides are quite
abundant, although they often occur mixed
with other compounds. |
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