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.
This character is used for the element and little else — you are unlikely to meet it outside a chemistry classroom.
Where it sits among the 118
First isolated in 1885.
Where it comes from in China
Praseodymium sits next to neodymium in the periodic table and behaves so nearly identically that the two are often not separated at all, but sold together as a mixed metal under the old name didymium. Pulling one lanthanide from its neighbour takes hundreds of repeated stages of solvent extraction, and that separation capacity — rather than the ore itself — is what concentrated the industry around Baotou. The rock comes from Bayan Obo; the difficult part happens afterwards, in the refineries.
The full entry
For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.
镨Praseodymium in the dictionary →Others built the same way
Every one of these carries 钅, and every one is a metal.