About 50 years ago I was weeding a lettuce field at a muck farm in Oswego, N.Y. (there’s an Oswego in Kansas, too). Muck farms are rich in decayed organic material and hold water well, sometimes too well. When dry they can catch on fire, and unless a rain comes by quickly, the fires are very difficult to put out. However, these farms make growing vegetables easy.
One day while pulling up weeds, I discovered a very dense rock. One of the beauties of muck is the soil is generally rock free, making it easier to plant, weed and harvest. So this rock intrigued me. I took it to the place where I was staying and calculated that the “rock” was denser than iron. I then cut the “rock” with a hacksaw, revealing a shiny metal-like substance. I was sure it was a meteorite. The exterior looked like a piece of coal, and it had no rust.
This stay in Oswego was temporary as I was on my way to Kingston, Ontario by bicycle. I hid the “rock” at the farm and figured I would get it when I returned, which I did a week later after traveling a couple hundred miles sightseeing. As fate would have it, though, I could not find it when I returned. I later learned that it was indeed most likely a meteorite, a rare find. The internet was unavailable to me — you Gen-Xers, et al! — what a difference that would have made.
Rare earth minerals aren’t so rare, they just play hard to get. I so wish I could have found it.
That leads us to this month’s column: Some rare information on the so-labeled rare earth metals and their compounds. The truth is that these rare earth elements are not rare at all. What classified them as rare is that they are in lower concentrations and difficult to process; that is, to assemble the elements to make a magnet.
According to a recent article in Design World magazine:
“They........