Lanthanum is a soft and ductile metal. Ductility means the ability of a substance to be stretched long. Lanthanum can be easily pulled into a string. The softness of the metal enables it to be sliced into pieces with a kitchen knife.
Lanthanum is silvery-white in colour. It was Carl Gustaf Mosander, a Swedish chemist, who discovered lanthanum in 1839. It wasn’t until 1923, though, that a fairly pure sample of the element was produced. Lanthanum is traditionally considered a rare metal because it is rarer than most elements found in their pure form on Earth. However, the element, in fact, is not rare at all as the concentration of the element in the earth’s crust is at about thirty-two parts per million.
Lanthanum is an important factor in the manufacture of vacuum tubes, hydrogen alloys, medications, and it has high utility in molecular biology. Today, lanthanum is used as a component of nickel-metal hydride batteries, whose most important commercial utility is in hybrid cars. Lanthanum has the atomic number of 57, and its atomic symbol is La.
