All practice pages/Interatomic theory/Elements
Element 21, a transition metal
A light, rare metal that Mendeleev predicted before anyone found it, now used to strengthen the aluminum in bike frames and baseball bats.
Period 4, group 3. The other transition metals are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.
Scandium gives up its two 4s electrons and its single 3d electron to form Sc³⁺, the only ion it commonly makes, so it behaves more like aluminum than like a typical transition metal.
More common in the crust than lead, but spread so thinly that there are few ores worth mining. It is recovered mostly as a byproduct of processing other ores, in China, Russia and the Philippines.
Lars Fredrik Nilson found it in 1879 in the minerals euxenite and gadolinite and named it after Scandinavia. Per Teodor Cleve soon pointed out that it was the eka-boron Mendeleev had predicted in 1871, with the atomic mass and properties he had described.
A little scandium makes aluminum alloys stronger for bicycle frames, baseball bats and aircraft parts. Scandium iodide goes into metal-halide lamps that light stadiums and film sets with daylight-like light, and scandium-doped zirconia is used in solid oxide fuel cells.