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This week's element is Yttrium, known by the atomic symbol, Y, and the atomic number 39. Originally, its atomic symbol was Yt, but sometime in the early 1920s, it was replaced by Y. This element gets its strange name from the village of Ytterby in Sweden, which is located near where this element was discovered. As you can see in the above image, Yttrium is similar to many other elemental metals; it is a silver-grey in colour. It also is soft, lustrous and highly crystalline.
Yttrium is a rare earth metal that never occurs in its pure form in the wild. Even though it is a "rare earth metal", it is 400 times more common than silver on Earth. It also is quite common on the moon. However, most yttrium in the solar system is "star stuff"; created in red giant stars.
This element shares many similarities with the lanthanides and is often found in association with them, and thus, is often grouped with them. Like all group III elements, yttrium has an odd atomic number, so it has just one stable naturally-occurring isotope, 89Y.
Yttrium is used in a variety of items that you may come into contact with. To name a few, it is used on the electrodes of high-performance spark plugs and as an oxygen sensor in automobiles, it is used to make the red colour in CRT televisions (especially important if your team wears red), and is used to strengthen cubic zirconia -- "fake diamonds" -- in jewelry.
The biologists in the crowd will be disappointed to learn that yttrium has no known biological role, although different forms of this element will permanently damage your lungs or liver when inhaled.
Yttrium does have medical applications, especially in cancer treatment. The radioactive isotope, yttrium-90, which has a half-life of 64 hours, is used to specifically target a variety of lymphomas and leukemias, ovarian, colorectal, pancreatic, and bone cancer cells by binding this isotope to monoclonal antibodies that then bind directly to cancer cells. The intense radiation from decaying yttrium-90 then kills the bound cells.
In this video, we visit the Swedish village of Ytterby in winter, and we also visit the light side of the moon in summer, to tell the story of yttrium:
Visit periodicvideos's YouTube channel [video link]
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Video journalist Brady Haran is the man with the camera and the University of Nottingham is the place with the chemists. You can follow Brady on twitter @periodicvideos and the University of Nottingham on twitter @UniNottingham
You've already met these elements:
Strontium: Sr, atomic number 38
Rubidium: Rr, atomic number 37
Krypton: Kr, atomic number 36
Bromine: Br, atomic number 35
Selenium: Se, atomic number 34
Arsenic: As, atomic number 33
Germanium: Ge, atomic number 32
Gallium: Ga, atomic number 31
Zinc: Zn, atomic number 30
Copper: Cu, atomic number 29
Nickel: Ni, atomic number 28
Cobalt: Co, atomic number 27
Iron: Fe, atomic number 26
Manganese: Mn, atomic number 25
Chromium: Cr, atomic number 24
Vanadium: V, atomic number 23
Titanium: Ti, atomic number 22
Scandium: Sc, atomic number 21
Calcium: Ca, atomic number 20
Potassium: K, atomic number 19
Argon: Ar, atomic number 18
Chlorine: Cl, atomic number 17
Sulfur: S, atomic number 16
Phosphorus: P, atomic number 15
Silicon: Si, atomic number 14
Aluminium: Al, atomic number 13
Magnesium: Mg, atomic number 12
Sodium: Na, atomic number 11
Neon: Ne, atomic number 10
Fluorine: F, atomic number 9
Oxygen: O, atomic number 8
Nitrogen: N, atomic number 7
Carbon: C, atomic number 6
Boron: B, atomic number 5
Beryllium: Be, atomic number 4
Lithium: Li, atomic number 3
Helium: He, atomic number 2
Hydrogen: H, atomic number 1
Here's a wonderful interactive Periodic Table of the Elements that is just really really fun to play with!
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