1803,1839

Cerium

• Klaproth and the team of Berzelius and Hisinger
• discovered the new earth from the Bastnäs mine.
• Klaproth called it ochroite because if its ochre color,
• but the honor of naming it went to Berzelius and Hisinger
• and they called it cerium after the dwarf planet Ceres,
• which Piazzi had named after goddess of golden grain.
• “Hold it a second,” said Klaproth.
• “If you name it after Ceres, it should be cererium.”
• Nevertheless, Mosander later isolated pure cerium
• and showed that the cerium oxide previously discovered
• contained other rare earths. Eventually, the oxide produced
• not only cerium, but also lanthanum, gadolinium,
• praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, and europium.

Atomic number 58

• Ferrocerium alloy is pyrophoric.
• Look for that in your cigarette-lighter flints.
• Carl Auer von Welsbach invented the flints
• as a use for cerium, as well as successful gas mantles.
• Mischmetal, a mix of cerium and rare earths,
• is used in aluminum and iron alloys.
• Cerium spontaneously ignites in air
• and its hot gases are toxic.

Stuff with sparks

• Different ferrous metals
• when applied to a grinding wheel
• produce different patterns of sparks.
• When a flint strikes a steel
• the sparks that fly
• are fragments of burning steel
• but sparks that fly
• from a ferrocerium flint
• are fragments of burning cerium.