the.com/lanthanum
the element so eager to react it spent centuries hiding behind cerium's coattails.
means Lanthanum is a soft, silvery-white metallic element, atomic number 57, the first of the lanthanide series, prized for use in camera lenses, hybrid-car batteries, and catalysts.
from From the Greek 'lanthanein,' meaning 'to lie hidden' or 'to escape notice' — the same root that gives us 'lethe,' the river of forgetfulness in the underworld. The name was apt: the element hid for years inside what chemists thought was pure cerium oxide, only teased out in the early 19th century by a Swedish chemist who fittingly chose a name confessing how long it had stayed concealed.
- name meaning
- Greek for to lie hidden, fittingly elusive
- discovery
- found lurking inside cerium nitrate in 1839
- hybrid cars
- each Prius battery packs kilograms of it
- camera lenses
- sharpens high-end optics with rare clarity
- tarnishes fast
- corrodes in air within mere minutes
mountain pass mine — california rare earth mine producing lanthanum as byproduct, opened 2012
baotou steel rare earth — inner mongolia facility producing ~70% of world's lanthanum from bastnasite ore