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Neodymium probably has the highest name recognition of any of the rare earths, because of its use in "neodymium magnets", also known as "rare earth magnets" and "neodymium-iron-boron magnets", which are currently the strongest permanent magnets known.
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  Rare earth magnet.
Neodymium magnets are very brittle and are therefore often plated with nickel. Ed Pegg demagnetized one of his magnets (to protect any laptop computers put on the table over the element), and I chipped away some of the plating. We think this is probably about 30% neodymium.
These are dangerously strong magnets! In fact they are so strong you can levitate bits of pyrolytic graphiteover them, as you can see in the video.
Source: Force Field
Contributor: Ed Pegg Jr
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $3
Size: 0.5"
Purity: <35%
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  Hunky lump.
Finally, a lump of actual pure neodymium. The stuff is everywhere in magnets, and it's not terribly expensive in that form, but it's not commonly found in pure form outside of chemical catalogs. I store this lump under mineral oil to protect it from oxidation.
I chose this sample to represent its element in my Photographic Periodic Table Poster. The sample photograph includes text exactly as it appears in the poster, which you are encouraged to buy a copy of.
Source: George (not 007) Lazenby
Contributor: George (not 007) Lazenby
Acquired: 20 November, 2002
Text Updated: 4 May, 2007
Price: Donated
Size: 0.75"
Purity: 99.99%
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Lump.
This sample arrived with a full set of lanthanides at a time when I was missing europium, terbium, holmium, ytterbium, and of course lutetium.
This very kind donation from Max Whitby of The Red Green & Blue Company in England completed my element collection, to the extent that it gave me a plausible sample of every element one can plausibly have a sample of. (The Red Green & Blue Company is selling a periodic table collection containing similar samples of the same stuff, and if you want a ready-made collection of elements, that's the first place I would look.)
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description or the company's website which includes many photographs and pricing details. I have two photographs of each sample from the set: One taken by me and one from the company. You can see photographs of all the samples displayed in a periodic table format: my pictures or their pictures. Or you can see both side-by-side with bigger pictures in numerical order.
The picture on the left was taken by me. Here is the company's version (there is some variation between sets, so the pictures sometimes show different variations of the samples):
Source: Max Whitby of RGB
Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB
Acquired: 20 December, 2002
Text Updated: 11 August, 2007
Price: Donated
Size: 0.5"
Purity: 99.4%
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Sample from the Everest Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (except gases) weigh about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order.
Source: Rob Accurso
Contributor: Rob Accurso
Acquired: 7 February, 2003
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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Headphone magnets.
There's nothing special about these mini-headphones except that their package uses the word NEODYMIUM in very prominent letters right on the front. It's not every day you see a rare earth being promoted in quite such flashy letters, but they are quite right to do so: It is neodymium-iron-boron magnets that make very small, very light, very good-sounding headphones possible. (To make a speaker sound good you need a strong magnet, and to make it light you need a small magnet. Neodymium-iron-boron magnets are the strongest available for a given weight, which is why they are used in essentially all headphones these days.)
Source: San Jose Airport
Contributor: San Jose Airport
Acquired: 29 May, 2003
Price: $16
Size: 0.2"
Purity: <35%
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Hollow cathode lamp.
Lamps like this are available for a very wide range of elements: Click the Sample Group link below to get a list of all the elements I have lamps like this for. They are used as light sources for atomic absorption spectrometers, which detect the presence of elements by seeing whether a sample absorbs the very specific wavelengths of light associated with the electronic transitions of the given element. The lamp uses an electric arc to stimulate the element it contains to emit its characteristic wavelengths of light: The same electronic transitions are responsible for emission and absorption, so the wavelengths are the same.
In theory, each different lamp should produce a different color of light characteristic of its element. Unfortunately, the lamps all use neon as a carrier gas: You generally have to have such a carrier gas present to maintain the electric arc. Neon emits a number of very strong orange-red lines that overwhelm the color of the specific element. In a spectrometer this is no problem because you just use a prism or diffraction grating to separate the light into a spectrum, then block out the neon lines. But it does mean that they all look pretty much the same color to the naked eye.
I've listed the price of all the lamps as $20, but that's really just a rough average: I paid varying amounts at various eBay auctions for these lamps, which list for a lot more from an instrument supplier.
(Truth in photography: These lamps all look alike. I have just duplicated a photo of one of them to use for all of them, because they really do look exactly the same regardless of what element is inside. The ones listed are all ones I actually have in the collection.)
Source: eBay seller heruur
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 24 December, 2003
Price: $20
Size: 8"
Purity: 99.9%
Sample Group: Atomic Emission Lamps
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Daylight incandescent bulb.
These bulbs are an abomination. They are ordinary, inefficient incandescent bulbs that have been rendered even more inefficient by coating the bulb with a neodymium-based filter that absorbs the dingy yellow light that makes incandescent light so unpleasant. The result is a pleasant enough daylight color of light, created in the most wasteful way imaginable. Please don't buy this kind of bulb: Get compact fluorescent bulbs instead, they last an incredibly long time, save you many times their purchase price in electricity, and the light from them is much nicer.
This bulb is displayed in my Bulb Stand.
Source: Hardware Store
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 28 November, 2003
Price: $1
Size: 6"
Purity: <1%
Sample Group: Light Bulbs
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Magnetic icosahedron.
Ed builds strange shapes out of magnets some times. Of course it's mathematically interesting to see what shapes can be built this way, and a hollow icosahedron is pretty impressive! This one is made out of high-strength neodymium-iron-boron magnets.
Source: Force Field
Contributor: Ed Pegg Jr
Acquired: 8 April, 2004
Price: Donated
Size: 2.5"
Purity: <35%
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Advertising set.
This lovely little set of rare earth oxides was made to promote the fact that rare earths really aren't very rare. Once the technology was developed to separate and purify then economically, they became quite common in fact. There is no date on this piece which is a pity, but I would guess it was made in the 1960's.
Source: SoCal (Nevada), Inc
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 23 July, 2004
Price: $20
Size: 8"
Purity: >20%
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Element coin.
Dave Hamric sells element samples under the name Metallium. He's developed a line of coins struck out of various common and uncommon metals: They are quite lovely, and very reasonably priced, considering the difficulty of creating some of them.
Here is the back side of this coin (click either picture to see it larger):
Click the Sample Group link below to see many other coins made of various elements, or click the link to his website above if you want to buy one like this.
Source: Dave Hamric
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 30 September, 2007
Text Updated: 30 September, 2007
Price: $39
Size: 0.75"
Purity: >99%
Sample Group: Coins
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Oil filter magnet.
This is a strong magnet meant to be stuck to the oil filter in your car to trap small particles of metal as they flow by in the oil, thus protecting the engine from wear caused by such debris. Not a stupid idea, I have no idea if it actually works.
Source: eBay
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 11 March, 2009
Text Updated: 12 March, 2009
Price: $10
Size: 1"
Purity: 30%
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Magnetic earrings.
Neodymium magnet from a pair of earrings designed to be worn by people who don't have holes in their ears.
Source: Mall
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 24 March, 2009
Text Updated: 24 March, 2009
Price: $5
Size: 0.5"
Purity: 30%
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Magnetic earrings.
Neodymium magnet from a pair of earrings designed to be worn by people who don't have holes in their ears.
Source: Mall
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 24 March, 2009
Text Updated: 24 March, 2009
Price: $5
Size: 0.5"
Purity: 30%
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Monazite Sand.
Monazite is a thorium-bearing mineral that occurs in sand deposits in a number of places around the world. Only a small proportion of the sand in this sample is actually monazite: It is probably somewhat selected compared to normally occurring sand deposits, but not much. It's kind of remarkable, really, that you can collect thorium just by scooping it up with a shovel.
Source: Max Whitby of RGB
Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB
Acquired: 20 September, 2005
Price: Donated
Size: 1.5"
Composition: (Ce,La,Nd,Th)PO4
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Monazite.
Description from the source:
Monazite ( (Ce La Nd Th) P O4 mon.), Steli near Tveit, Iveland, Nordge. Extremely well crystallized example. 0,8x0,4x0,4 cm; 5 g with box.
Source: Simone Citon
Contributor: John Gray
Acquired: 28 January, 2009
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: Trade
Size: 0.3"
Composition: (CeLaNdTh)PO4
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Compact flash card hard drive.
This is just crazy. When I first heard about these things my jaw literally dropped (not literally). They are obsolete now, having been hopelessly beaten by solid state flash memory, but in their day they were the highest capacity compact memory cards available, up to 8GB by 2008 (by which time 64GB flash memory cards were available).
And they are mechanical hard disk drives. Let me remind you of the dimensions of a compact flash card (type II): 1.4" x 1.7" x 0.2" (36.4mm x 42.8mm x 5mm). The platter in this drive is about 1" (2.5cm) in diameter. It's just crazy small. There's an electric motor spinning the platter, an electro-magnet that moves the read-write heads back and forth, the whole works, plus of course all the control and interface electronics, packing into no space.
I stand in awe of this device.
The platters are aluminum, the electronics are silicon, the wiring is copper, the magnets are neodymium iron boron, and the magnetic coating is iron and cobalt based.
Source: Electronics Store
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 28 February, 2009
Text Updated: 1 March, 2009
Price: $100
Size: 1.75"
Composition: AlSiCuCoFeNdB
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Didymium glasses.
This is a lens from a pair of didymium eye glasses meant for glassblowers. The "di" refers to "two", the "dymium" refers to the two elements in the glass, which both end in "dymium". Those two are praseodymium and neodymium. Together they cause the glass to strongly absorb the sodium yellow emission line that creates the bring glow when glass is molten. Wearing them you can stare directly into the molten glass and see only a dull glow from the torch.
Source: eBay
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 24 March, 2009
Text Updated: 25 March, 2009
Price: $50
Size: 2"
Composition: PrNd
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Insane mineral capsules.
These minerals capsules are called "Immune Boost 77", from Morningstar Minerals. They are either being incredibly honest, or they really don't understand what they're saying when they list what amounts to nearly the entire periodic table on the label, as the "trace minerals" they contain.
Here is the list in all its glory, typed in by my daughter in exchange for my paying for a membership in the Miley Cyrus fan club: Antimony, Barium, Beryllium, Bismuth, Boron, Bromine, Calcium, Carbon, Cerium, Cesium, Chloride, Chromium, Cobalt, Copper, Dysprosium, Erbium, Europium, Florine, Gadolinium, Gallium, Germanium, Gold, Hafnium, Holmium, Indium, Iodine, Iridium, Iron, Lanthanum, Lithium, Lutetium, Magnesium, Manganese, Molybdenum, Neodymium, Niacin, Nickel, Niobium, Osmium, Palladium, Phosphorus, Platinum, Potassium, Praseodymium, Rhenium, Rhodium, Rubidium, Ruthenium, Samarium, Scandium, Selenium, Silicon, Silver, Sodium, Strontium, Sulfur, Tantalum, Thallium, Thorium, Tellurium, Terbium, Thulium, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Vanadium, Ytterbium, Yttrium, Zinc, Zirconium.
Some of them are just silly, like thulium, which has absolutely no biological function. Others are a bit scarier, like thallium and thorium that are deadly poisons, and tellurium, which makes you smell of rotten onions for weeks.
Basically what they've done is list everything that occurs in even trace amounts in mixed monazite sand, which is kind of what the stuff inside looks like. The only reason they aren't seriously harmful (I assume) is that most of these are not actually present in any meaningful quantity.
My attention is drawn to these and other similar mineral supplements every time I decide to see if anything interesting has popped up on eBay for one or another of the obscure rare earths. Generally speaking if you search eBay for those guys you get very little of interest unless you turn on the option to search the text of the item description as well as the titles. Then you get lots of trace mineral supplements that one can only hope don't actually contain them.
Source: eBay seller grandma-adams
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 24 March, 2009
Text Updated: 29 March, 2009
Price: $15
Size: 0.75"
Composition: SbCsDyErEuGdHfHoInLaLuNdPrSmScThTlTeTbTmYbY
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Himalayan sea salt.
There is a list of 84 elements that seems to pop up repeatedly in the ingredient lists of "natural" mineral products, supplements, pills, and the like. Even, it turns out, in salt. Here then is the list of minerals claimed to be found in all-natural organic Himalayan sea salt:hydrogen, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluoride, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, chloride, calcium, scandium, titanium, vanadium, chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, gallium, germanium, arsenic, selenium, bromine, rubidium, strontium, yttrium, zirconium, niobium, molybdenum, ruthenium, rhodium palladium, silver, cadmium, indium, tin, antimony, tellurium, iodine, cesium, barium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium, hafnium, tantalum, tungsten, rhenium, osmium, iridium, platinum, gold, mercury, thallium, lead, bismuth, polonium, astatine, francium, radium, actinium, thorium, protactinium, uranium, neptunium and plutonium. I wish someone would tell these people that, for example, neptunium and plutonium do not occur in nature at all, let alone in salt. Unless, I suppose, if you count nuclear fallout as a "natural" source of ingredients.
What bothers me most is what this says about the level of scientific literacy, both of the people selling the stuff, and the people buying it. Does no one actually read the list? Or do they read it an not realize how preposterous it is? It's enough to make you despair for the future of mankind.
Pretty salt, though.
Source: eBay seller saltwonders
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 28 March, 2009
Text Updated: 4 April, 2009
Price: $15
Size: 0.25"
Composition: NaClSbCsDyErEuGdHfHoInLaLuNdPrSmScThTlTeTbTmYbY
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