Well in terms of the periodic table, if this place didn't exist
and people didn't come here to work
whole areas of the periodic table wouldn't be there now and it wouldn't be the periodic table that we know today
It is quarter to three and we are about to get in the car to go to the airport
It's nice sunny weather in Stockholm
I don't know what to think about this.
I'm getting the feeling that our car might be covered in snow
It may take a while to find our car
Keep left then take the exit left
That is awesome
Take the exit left
So, we have reached our destination
Hi, do you speak English -Yes
Continue this road. It is not much too see I'm sorry
I think it is after number 65 perhaps? - Thank you very much
So, somewhere near number 65
And then you basically take "Gruvagen"
no sorry, it is called "Faltspatsvargen"
Thank you very much
We're getting there now
Getting close now, and all the locals know of it
So it must be big. It must be famous
Pull over there
Ah, Yttery "Gruva"
So it's the birthplace of four elements on the periodic table.
Yttrium, Ytterbium, Erbium and Terbium.
Ytterby mine, a historic chemical landmark, in my best Swedish
So here we see Yttrium, Ytterbium, Terbium, Erbium
All found for the first time form minerals, from Gadolinite, in this quarry
And we were told by a nice gentleman down the road that we can follow the path up through the woods
and hopefully see the mine... so let's see if we can go find it
Don't fall over
So we've reached the top
Where are we? -Look up yonder. To the left
Oh wow
We got to scramble up there then?
So this is excellent as a chemist. For me to come here and see where these elements first came from
is really quite cool
Here we can see evidence of the mining. Now this mine closed may years ago
but you can see where the miners have drilled using hand drills into these rocks
to make holes to put explosives in to break away the minerals.
Very early on, late 1700s, a naval officer called Arrhenius visited the quarry
I think he ay have been prospecting for fuel, and he found a black rock he thought may have been coal.
When he picked the rock up he found it was far too heavy to be coal.
Coal is simply carbonaceous mineral but this rock was obviously too heavy to be coal
and he thought there must be something strange about it
He wondered if it might be a new ore of tungsten which had recently been found
So he passed this material to a colleague or a professor at the nearby Abo University for analysis
So that's where the chemistry of the rare earths as they're called, or the lanthanides, started
with the discovery of four new elements from that original black mineral rock.
We have found the quarry and it's breathtaking
I'm surprised that we're able to come because everyone told us it was fenced off and closed
We didn't see any fences
Anyway, somewhere here is a sign which is commemorative of this site so let's see if we can find this historic landmark site.
So we have now come up the side of the quarry into the sunlight
to find the original plaque from the American Society of Minerals is in situ
So here it says the ASM has designated Ytterby mine a historical landmark
For the discovery of four periodic elements - Yttrium, Terbium, Erbium and Ytterbium
And that's actually in chronological order. Yttrium was the first one isolated from the black rock
And over a period of the next 40 to 50 years successive scientists re-analyzed that sample
And were able to extract both Terbium and Erbium initially
Leading to the final isolation of Ytterbium in its purest from way back in 1950
A period of 100 years of chemistry summed up in this sign from this one specific quarry in Sweden
Captions by Brady Haran