Crossword clues for yttrium
yttrium
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Yttrium \Yt"tri*um\, n. [NL., from Ytterby, in Sweden. See Erbium.] (Chem.) A rare metallic element of the boron-aluminium group, found in gadolinite and other rare minerals, and extracted as a dark gray powder. Symbol Y. Atomic number 39. Atomic weight, 88.9. [Written also ittrium.]
Note: Associated with yttrium are certain rare elements, as erbium, ytterbium, samarium, etc., which are separated in a pure state with great difficulty. They are studied by means of their spark or phosphorescent spectra. Yttrium is now regarded as probably not a simple element, but as a mixture of several substances.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
metallic rare-earth element, 1866, coined in Modern Latin by Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander (1797-1858) from Ytterby, name of a town in Sweden where mineral containing it was found.
Wiktionary
n. A metallic chemical element (''symbol'' Y) with an atomic number of 39.
WordNet
n. a silvery metallic element that is common in rare-earth minerals; used in magnesium and aluminum alloys [syn: Y, atomic number 39]
Wikipedia
Yttrium is a chemical element with symbol Y and atomic number 39. It is a silvery-metallic transition metal chemically similar to the lanthanides and has often been classified as a " rare earth element". Yttrium is almost always found in combination with lanthanide elements in rare earth minerals, and is never found in nature as a free element. Y is the only stable isotope, and the only isotope found in the Earth's crust.
In 1787, Carl Axel Arrhenius found a new mineral near Ytterby in Sweden and named it ytterbite, after the village. Johan Gadolin discovered yttrium's oxide in Arrhenius' sample in 1789, and Anders Gustaf Ekeberg named the new oxide yttria. Elemental yttrium was first isolated in 1828 by Friedrich Wöhler.
The most important uses of yttrium are LEDs and phosphors, particularly the red phosphors in television set cathode ray tube (CRT) displays. Yttrium is also used in the production of electrodes, electrolytes, electronic filters, lasers, superconductors, various medical applications, and tracing various materials to enhance their properties.
Yttrium has no known biological role and exposure to yttrium compounds can cause lung disease in humans.
Usage examples of "yttrium".
That is, as Bickerstaff was to mankind, so the element yttrium was to his process.
However, the Bickerstaff process subjected all matter involved to extraordinary heat, pressure, and bombardment, and so the supply of yttrium has steadily vanished.
There were those who claimed that by hoarding the minute quantity of yttrium remaining to us we might be able to hold off the invaders when they should come.
Now, when all our yttrium is gone, we have found a device to transmute metals.
Such stellar nuclear reactions do not readily generate erbium, hafnium, dysprosium, praseodymium or yttrium, but rather the elements we know in everyday life, elements returned to the interstellar gas, where they are swept up in a subsequent generation of cloud collapse and star and planet formation.
Chu and his fellow workers substituted yttrium, a metal with many rare-earth properties, for lanthanum in the ceramic pellets they were making.
That same morning, as all the experts and high officials of the secret police shook their heads, bleary-eyed after a sleepless night, the constructors asked for quartz, vanadium, steel, copper, platinum, rhinestones, dysprosium, yttrium and thulium, also cerium and germanium, and most of the other elements that make up the Universe, plus a variety of machines and qualified technicians, not to mention a wide as sortment of spies--for so insolent had the constructors become, that on the triplicate requisition form they boldly wrote: "Also, kindly send agents of various cuts and stripes at the discretion and with the approval of the Proper Authorities.