How the character is built
The 钅 radical marks this as a metal, and that is not a coincidence of this one character — it holds right across the table. Read the radical first and the element's state at room temperature is already settled. It is 金 (jīn) squeezed into the space beside another component — radicals change shape by position, which is why 金 is hard to spot until you know to look for 钅.
Phonetic 女 nǚ supplies the sound only; the metal radical supplies the meaning.
Where you actually meet it
钕磁铁 (nǚ cítiě) — neodymium magnet
The element itself
Neodymium sits at the heart of the strongest permanent magnets ever made — an alloy with iron and boron, worked out in the early 1980s, that made it possible to shrink headphone drivers, hard-disk actuators and motors to a fraction of their former size. The magnets have one weakness, which is that heat destroys their alignment, and the usual fix is to add a little dysprosium. Neodymium also colours glass a curious violet that shifts noticeably between daylight and incandescent light, a party trick chemists have enjoyed since the nineteenth century.
Where it sits among the 118
First isolated in 1885.
Where it comes from in China
Neodymium, the metal behind the strongest permanent magnets ever made, comes from two carbonatite districts: Bayan Obo in Inner Mongolia and the Mianning–Dechang belt around Maoniuping in western Sichuan. Both are places where carbonate-rich magma rose through continental crust and left its rare earths in bastnäsite, a fluorocarbonate mineral that strongly favours the light end of the lanthanide series. The magnet metals were an afterthought when these deposits were first opened; the geology had simply put them there and waited.
The full entry
For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.
钕Neodymium in the dictionary →Others built the same way
Every one of these carries 钅, and every one is a metal.