Ytterbium Research Paper

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Jaden Gaddis Avila Chemistry 8 November 2015 Ytterbium Ytterbium is a rare element that has just recently be found. Marignac discovered it in 1850 in Ytterby, a small village in Sweden. There was noting really know about Ytterbium until the 1950s because the element was not in a very pure form; in fact when it was first found with the monazite sand, which only contains about 0.03% Ytterbium. Ytterbium is a very weird element, the metal changes with different pressures. When the metal is at its normal state it is a conductor, but when it reaches 14,000 atmospheres of pressure it turns into a semi-conductor. Sense ytterbium changes with pressure; it is used in many different technological devices. For example, many different skydivers, or …show more content…

Its atomic number is 70, and its atomic mass is 173.04, its symbol is Yb, its melting point is 1097k, and its boiling point is 1466k. There is nothing really known about ytterbium due to it weird, for example the ytterbium when it is just sitting there is reacts with the oxygen and forms a protective oxide layer around the ytterbium. With this protective layer that surrounds the Ytterbium preserves the element from the oxygen, which breaks down the element. Ytterbium is a very soft and very malleable metal. Ytterbium is not as rare as we think it is due to the fact that it is more common than tin, but we do not use ytterbium very often due to the fact that we don’t know very much about the element. How is Ytterbium used in today’s world, on the periodic table, what are its classification is a question many people have when they hear the word Ytterbium. We know now that Ytterbium is a rare element but is twice as common as tin. That Ytterbium is a weird element due to its chemistry with the different chemical reactions with oxygen and different pressure levels. That Ytterbium was discovered in Ytterby by a chemist named Merignac, and he didn’t know much about the element, as we don’t either till this

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