Rare earths are very significant when it comes to the development and use of technical equipment as they can be very important to the performance of the unit. An example of an everyday piece of technology that uses rare earths is the IPhone. Apple has said that the IPhone uses eight rare earths, from everything from the colored screen, to speakers, to the miniature circuits inside the phone. Although the amount of rare earths in the phone is very little, the demand for rare earths will continue to increase as the phones become more and more popular. Also phones do not have a very long life so as more are made, more rare earths will be used. As more rare earths are used it also brings up the question of how this is affects the environment and
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Gadolinium 's element symbol is Gd with an atomic number of sixty four. Its atomic weight is 157.25 AMU. It is grouped with the Lanthanides, it has a melting point of 1313 degrees Celsius and it has a boiling point of 3273 degrees Celsius. Gadolinium is a soft silvery metal that reacts with oxygen and water. In nature the element occurs as a mixture of six stable isotopes gadolinium 158, 160, 156, and 157,155,154,152. The Gadolinium-157 isotope has the highest thermal neutron capture cross-section of any known stable element. Gadolinium was discovered by a Swiss chemist in 1880 named Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac when he “recorded previously unknown spectroscopic lines in an oxide preparation taken from the mineral samarskite” (Chemicool). In 1886, French chemist Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran confirmed Marignac’s previous discovery “reported that its spectral lines varied according to the source from which it came” (RSC). Boisbaudran suggested the name gadolinium for the new element after the 18th century chemist and mineralogist Johan Gadolin. Pure metallic gadolinium was first prepared by French chemist and engineer Felix Trombe in 1935. A few months later Georges Urbain, Pierre Weiss, and Felix Trombe discovered that gadolinium becomes ferromagnetic at about room temperature, which was the first pure element to show this property other than the three ‘classical’ metals iron, nickel and cobalt. Along with this discovery they also found that gadolinium becomes more ferromagnetic than iron but only at very low
Gadolinium 's element symbol is Gd with an atomic number of sixty four. Its atomic weight is 157.25 AMU. It is grouped with the Lanthanides, it has a melting point of 1313 degrees Celsius and it has a boiling point of 3273 degrees Celsius. Gadolinium is a soft silvery metal that reacts with oxygen and water. In nature the element occurs as a mixture of six stable isotopes gadolinium 158, 160, 156, and 157,155,154,152. The Gadolinium-157 isotope has the highest thermal neutron capture cross-section of any known stable element. Gadolinium was discovered by a Swiss chemist in 1880 named Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac when he “recorded previously unknown spectroscopic lines in an oxide preparation taken from the mineral samarskite” (Chemicool). In 1886, French chemist Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran confirmed Marignac’s previous discovery “reported that its spectral lines varied according to the source from which it came” (RSC). Boisbaudran suggested the name gadolinium for the new element after the 18th century chemist and mineralogist Johan Gadolin. Pure metallic gadolinium was first prepared by French chemist and engineer Felix Trombe in 1935. A few months later Georges Urbain, Pierre Weiss, and Felix Trombe discovered that gadolinium becomes ferromagnetic at about room temperature, which was the first pure element to show this property other than the three ‘classical’ metals iron, nickel and cobalt. Along with this discovery they also found that gadolinium becomes more ferromagnetic than iron but only at very low