♪ (intro music) ♪
[ATTENTION! This video shows dangerous experiments! Do not repeat the experiments shown in this VIDEO!]
Hello everyone. Today I am going to tell you about such a metal as Yttrium.
In the periodic table of elements, yttrium belongs to group 3
and is classified as one of the rare Earth metals,
along with such metals as scandium, and other lanthanides.
In nature, yttrium is found in minerals containing rare earth metals, such as Xenotime.
It is hard to separate yttrium from other rare earth metals in the production process.
Its price however isn't that high, about ten Euros for 10 grams.
Appearance-wise, yttrium is a silvery metallic metal,
which is highly resistant to oxidation due to its thick oxide layer, which covers the metal.
Yttrium's density is not very high.
That is why it is firm, yet flexible enough for making such souvenir coins.
The only issue such an yttrium coin has is being highly active,
which in turn causes it to form an oxide film on the surface.
However, yttrium doesn't ignite in air, even when pierced.
It only forms a fine oxide layer.
Nevertheless, fine particles ignite well in air,
and can even self-ignite—for instance, when being ground by a grinding wheel.
Yttrium sparks are very bright. When heated up in air this metal forms yttrium oxide,
which along with Europium is used in red luminophores in old television picture tubes.
Also, when heated up, yttrium oxide glows very brightly as a result of candle luminescence,
or in simple words: it converts heat energy into light energy.
This property was used to produce gas mantles for gas lamps, which were widely used
for lighting the streets and for camping.
The first gas mantles were covered in thorium salts;
however, because of their being radioactive, they were soon substituted by much safer yttrium.
Such mantles shine very brightly,
which makes it possible for us to call yttrium one of the brightest rare earth metals on Earth.
Yttrium's chemical activity is similar to that of other lanthanides.
It also reacts well with acids.
For instance, when reacting with hydrochloric acid, it forms hydrogen and yttrium chloride,
which is used, for example, for purifying metallic yttrium.
With weaker acids—for instance with acetic acid—
this metal also reacts forming yttrium oxalate,
which in turn breaks down into yttrium hydroxide, as a result of hydrolysis in water.
By the way, in alkali, yttrium hydroxide
can slightly dissolve, which indicates its amphoteric properties, like scandium.
Nowadays, metallic yttrium is used as an addition
to zirconium, molybdenum, and chromium alloys
to reduce the size of the metal's crystals.
It's also used in aluminium alloys.
Spraying of yttrium oxide onto the surface of internal combustion engines
helps increase their durability by 400 times.
Pure yttrium oxide is also used to make by far the most widespread,
high-temperature superconducting ceramics,
superconductivity of which appears at about -183° Celsius, or 90° Kelvin.
In such a state, the ceramics lose all of their internal impedance and obtain unique properties.
Such materials become a magnet themselves when placed in close proximity to a strong magnet.
For instance, such ceramics are used for making magnetic bearings,
and also special superconducting wires,
which make up the main part of fusion reactors: tokamaks.
Another thing made from yttrium oxide is yttrium aluminum garnet,
which is an effective radio-waves filter.
Moreover, yttrium oxide is also used in the production of zirconium dioxide base ceramics,
and yttrium helps to stabilize the inner structure of ceramics, which improves hardening in a furnace.
To sum up, we can say that yttrium is a very unusual and useful metal, which due to its candle luminescence
can be called the brightest metal on Earth.
If you would like to support the continuous production of science videos like this one,
please support channel on Patreon. Link in the video description.
Please like this video and subscribe to my channel to see many more new and interesting [videos].
♪ (music) ♪