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Asked by to Heather, Dre, Charli, Becky on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Charlotte Flavell answered on 16 Jun 2014:
Hi chimpwoman,
Praseodymium is an element that is extremely rare – so rare in fact that if we want some, scientists have to make it from other things.
It is mixed with other things to allow us to make super-powered magnets – like you might get in a wind turbine.
By comparison, there is quite lot of gold on Earth. According to Wikipedia, a massive 174,100 tonnes of gold has been mined in human history – that’s a lot of gold!
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Rebecca Williams answered on 16 Jun 2014:
Praseodymium and Gold are both elements that are metals.
Praseodymium is part of a group of elements called the Rare Earth Elements – so it is very very rare! You will never find chunks of pure praseodymium metal lying around because it reacts too quickly so changes into other things. You can find chunks of gold though because it doesn’t react with anything (almost).
Both Praseodymium and Gold are elements that can be found in other things though. Praseodymium can be found as part of some minerals. It is found in a mineral called Monazite (picture here:
). If you compare the amount of the element Gold (Au) and the amount of the element Praseodymium (Pr), there is actually more Praseodymium in the Earth’s crust than there is Gold. Almost 1000 times more!
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