Rare-earth element
Any of the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium
Rare-earth element ▸ Facts ▸ Comments ▸ News ▸ Videos

The rare-earth elements (REE), also called the rare-earth metals or rare earths, and sometimes the lanthanides or lanthanoids, are a set of 17 nearly indistinguishable lustrous silvery-white soft heavy metals. Compounds containing rare earths have diverse applications in electrical and electronic components, lasers, glass, magnetic materials, and industrial processes.
The term "rare-earth" is a misnomer because they are not actually scarce, but historically it took a long time to isolate these elements.
They are relatively plentiful in the entire Earth's crust, but in practice they are spread thinly as trace impurities, so to obtain rare earths at usable purity requires processing enormous amounts of raw ore at great expense; thus the name "rare" earths.
0 shares | ShareTweetSavePostSend |
![]() US, Ukraine Sign Rare-Earth Deal MOU | Trump Says Final Agreement Coming Next Week Credit: Oneindia Duration: 03:46Published | |
![]() Trump Praises Zelensky Ahead Of Talks | White House Meeting To Focus On Peace, Rare Earth Deal Credit: Oneindia Duration: 03:32Published | |
You Might Like
No news matches foundSorry, we were unable to find any results in our database for your queryFree news archive accessDid you know? You are eligible to search our news archive with millions of news references free of charge. To do this, please sign in first at the top of the screen. • Information about free access to our news archive Search this site and the web: ![]() |