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All 118 elements

Element 70 ·lanthanide

镱

yì — "ytterbium"

Ytterbium

Traditional: 鐿

How the character is built

钅

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 意 yì, for the 'y-' of ytterbium.

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

Ytterbium melts at 824°C (1097 K) — lower than 53 of the 97 elements whose melting point has been measured, and higher than 43. The grey dots are the rest of the table.
In the Earth's crust there is about 3.2 grams in every tonne of rock. That makes it commoner than 48 of the 93 elements that occur naturally at all. The scale is logarithmic: each gridline is ten times the one below it.

First isolated in 1878.

The full entry

For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.

镱Ytterbium in the dictionary →

Others built the same way

Every one of these carries 钅, and every one is a metal.

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