That periodic table hanging in your science classroom is filled with weird letters and strange element names. Do you ever wonder about the lore behind those little squares? The whole table is full of incredible stories of luck and coincidence, but few stories are as impressive as the little Swedish town of Ytterby on the island of Resarö.
Today, mining companies do a lot of prep work before they ever break ground for a new mine. Scientists use magnetic scans, seismic waves, and electrical signals to locate valuable minerals underground. There aren't many surprises once the digging starts.
But years ago, finding the perfect place to mine needed a lot of luck. Miners would spot an interesting rock sitting above the dirt and dig deeper hoping for more. The risks were high and the odds of finding anything valuable were slim.
In 18th-century Europe, the mineral everyone was looking for was feldspar. Drinking tea from fancy dishes was extremely fashionable back then, and feldspar was the secret ingredient to creating the shine on the best porcelain tea sets.
Ytterby (IT-er-bee), Sweden, had an old quartz mine that looked promising for mining feldspar. When the miners dug in, though, they found something far more interesting.
It started when the miners unearthed a dark, dense rock. It caught the attention of local chemists, who analyzed it. They realized that a large chunk of it was made of something the world had never seen before. It turned out to be a brand-new element, which scientists named yttrium after the town where it was found.
That would be impressive enough, but scientists kept looking at the mines of Ytterby. If you look towards the bottom of the periodic table, do you notice how many elements have similar names? Yttrium, erbium, terbium, and ytterbium sound alike for a reason. They’re all named for Ytterby!
That bottom section of the periodic table is named the lanthanides. Elements in the lanthanides tend to clump together. Once the special dark ore from Ytterby was identified, scientists wondered if others might be nearby. By analyzing different samples, more elements started popping up.
In total, scientists eventually isolated nine elements from Ytterby ore: yttrium (Y), terbium (Tb), erbium (Er), ytterbium (Yb), holmium (Ho), scandium (Sc), thulium (Tm), tantalum (Ta), and gadolinium (Gd). That one tiny mine has contributed more element discoveries than any other single location on Earth!
Today, the elements found in Ytterby are doing much more than making dishes fancy. Ytterbium helps power lasers. Terbium helps create green colors on screens. Yttrium is used in superconductors and medical technologies. We have found other sources beside that tiny mine, but modern electronics depends heavily on the elements found in that one Swedish mine.
The graph below shows the amount of money expected to be spent on the purchase of yttrium for different uses around the world:
Here are some questions I'd have looking at this graph:
💡The whole graph represents all the money that was spent on yttrium for all purposes in 2023. What was the total amount spent on yttrium that year? How did you determine this?
💡The sections of the graph represent the amount of money spent on each purpose, or "application," for yttrium. What are the difference in percentages between the market for using yttrium in ceramics and the market for nuclear uses?
💡What is the difference in value (money spent) between the market for electronics and the market for medical?
💡In some years, there has been less yttrium available due to conflicts between different countries. By looking at this graph, can you tell which market would be most affected by a loss of yttrium? Why or why not?