Lutetium Facts
Lutetium Facts
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| Interesting Lutetium Facts: |
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| Charles James, Georges Urbain, and Carl Auer von Welsbach each extracted lutetium from a sample of the mineral ytterbia. |
| After dispute between the three scientists, Urbain was allowed to name the element because his results were published first. |
| Lutetium atoms are the smallest of any of the lanthanides. |
| The contraction which causes that small size also causes lutetium to have the highest melting point, the highest density, and the highest hardness of all lanthanides. |
| There are two naturally occurring isotopes of lutetium. |
| Only one of those isotopes, lutetium-175, is stable, making it a monoisotopic element. |
| The unstable isotope, lutetium-176, has a half-life of almost 38 trillion years. |
| Only 2.5% of the lutetium found on Earth is in the unstable form. |
| There are an additional 32 synthetic readioactive isotopes of lutetium. |
| Lutetium is never found on Earth in a pure state, but is always found in a mineral with other elements. |
| Lutetium is only available in the Earth's crust at about 0.5 milligrams per kilogram. |
| The entire global production of lutetium is only around ten tons each year. |
| Lutetium is one of the most expensive rare earth metals, costing approximately $10,000US per kilogram. |
| The most abundant commercial mineral that contains lutetium is monazite, which is about 0.0001% of the lutetium. |
| Because it is so expensive and so difficult to extract, there are very few commercial uses for lutetium. |
| Lutetium's stable isotope is used in the petroleum industry as a catalyst. |
| The lutetium-aluminium-garnet has been researched for possible uses in highly specialized lithography. |
| Stable lutetium is also used with other agents as a detecting reactant in medical PET tests. |
| The unstable isotopes of lutetium have more scientific applications, such as dating meteorites and as a radionuclide treatment for certain tumors. |
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