the.com/terbium
a rare earth so obscure even chemists forget it powers their screens
means Terbium is a soft, silvery rare-earth metal (element 65) used in phosphors that produce the green glow in displays and fluorescent lighting, as well as in certain magnets and alloys.
from Named for Ytterby, a tiny village in Sweden near a quarry whose unusually rich ore yielded an astonishing crop of new elements. The same little place lent its syllables to terbium, yttrium, ytterbium, and erbium — four elements from one wildly generous Scandinavian mine. Terbium was teased out in the 1840s by the chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander, and the '-ium' ending is the standard Latin suffix marking it as a metal.
- name origin
- Named after Ytterby, a tiny Swedish village
- green light
- Glows green in TV and phone displays
- shape shifter
- Changes length in magnetic fields, called magnetostriction
- hidden everywhere
- Hides in low-energy bulbs and solid-state lasers
- village haul
- Ytterby gave its name to four elements
dysprosium-terbium separation — rare earth elements separated at mountain pass, california and baotou, china mining operations