All practice pages/Interatomic theory/Elements
Element 66, a lanthanide
Named hard to get at after years of separation work, it now keeps electric car magnets strong when they heat up.
Period 6, in the lanthanide row set below the main table. The other lanthanides are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.
Dysprosium has 66 electrons, one for every proton, so the atom carries no charge. Below are the same 66 electrons written two ways.
1s² 2s² 2p⁶ 3s² 3p⁶ 3d¹⁰ 4s² 4p⁶ 4d¹⁰ 4f¹⁰ 5s² 5p⁶ 6s²
Short form: [Xe] 4f¹⁰ 6s², where [Xe] stands for the 54 electrons xenon already has.
That list runs by shell. In the order the subshells fill it reads [Xe] 6s² 4f¹⁰, because a subshell fills by its energy, not by its shell number.
The simple form counts electrons shell by shell. The orbital form says which subshell each one sits in: s holds 2, p holds 6, d holds 10 and f holds 14. Shell 4 here is 4s² 4p⁶ 4d¹⁰ 4f¹⁰, and 2 + 6 + 10 + 10 is 28.
Dysprosium sits in period 6 and has 6 shells. The period number counts the shells.
The outer shell holds 2 electrons. Those are the ones dysprosium can lose, gain or share, so they are the ones that decide what it bonds with.
Like the other lanthanides, it gives up three electrons to form the Dy³⁺ ion in most of its compounds.
Found in xenotime and in the ion-adsorption clays of southern China, which supply most of the world.
Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran separated it from holmium in 1886 after dozens of painstaking attempts, and named it from the Greek dysprositos, hard to get at. Pure dysprosium metal was not made until the 1950s, when ion-exchange methods arrived.
Small amounts in neodymium magnets stop them from losing strength when hot, which makes dysprosium vital for electric car motors and wind turbines. It also goes into Terfenol-D, metal-halide lamps and nuclear reactor control rods.