What is common between element Holmium and Stockholm?« Back to Questions List

Holmium is an element with atomic number 67 and represented as Ho. It is a bright, soft, silvery white element. It is commercially extracted from monazite and occurs in that mineral at a rate of about 0.05 per cent. Ion-exchange technique is used for extraction of the element. Holmium is a rare-earth element.

Stockholm is the capital city of Sweden and is known as Holmia in Latin.  The element Holmium is named after this city. The element was discovered spectrophotometrically in 1878 by Marc Delafontaine and Jacques Louis Soret.  In chemistry spectrophotometry is a method employed for the quantitative measurement of the reflection properties of a material as a function of wavelength. The method deals with visible light, near ultraviolet and near infrared.   Per Teodor Cleve discovered the element independently in 1879. He was a Swedish chemist and hence named the element after his hometown, Stockholm. The pure metal was isolated by Otto Holmberg in 1911. 

Holmium has certain special magnetic properties. It has the highest magnetic moment. This makes the element to be used in alloys for the production of magnetics. Holmium magnets have the power to create the strongest magnetic fields. Holmium also finds application in nuclear reactors because of its absorption capacity of neutrons.  Another application of Holmium is in laser surgery. There are not many commercial uses for Holmium.  Trivalent holmium ions have fluorescent properties like many other rare-earth ions yielding their own set of unique emission light lines.  Like the rare-earth elements Holmium is also used in certain laser and glass-colorant applications.

Dramatic color changing property depending on lighting condition is a special feature of Holmium oxide. In daylight, it is tannish yellow color. The color becomes a fiery orange red under trichromatic light. 

The element Holmium is not generally seen as a free element in nature. It is highly reactive. But when isolated, it is relatively stable in dry air at room temperature. It reacts with water and corrodes easily. It burns in air if heated.  The element is found in many compounds in a number of minerals. Monazite and gadolinite are two such compounds.  
 

Why is phosphorus known as devil’s element?

Osmium: The densest stable element on earth