Introduction
Here, this article includes information about the earth’s materials which includes rocks, soils, ores, minerals, and petroleum products. Here, we are going to discuss the rare earth materials and a list of the earth materials which includes several types of earth materials. This article also briefly discusses the crust of the earth’s materials. Earth materials mainly refer to natural materials such as soils, rocks, and minerals. This article also described the list of rare-earth materials and significant earth materials.
Earth Materials Definition
Earth materials consist of sediments, ores, rocks, petroleum and minerals products. It mainly refers to natural materials such as soils, rocks, and minerals. Earth materials are made over very high time intervals and aren’t active. Minerals are natural, inorganic solids along with different chemical compositions and physical properties.
Rare Earth Materials
Here, we will discuss the rare earth materials which are also known as “rare-earth elements (REEs).” These are utilized as elements in high technology instruments or devices, involving digital cameras, flat-screen TVs, electronic displays, computer hard drives, and computer monitors.
REE are required elements for more than two hundred products across the broad area of applications, particularly high-technology customer products, like computer hard drives, smartphones, hybrid and electric vehicles, and TVs. Important protection or defense applications involve guidance systems, radar, leasers, sonar systems, and electronic displays.
In the below-given table, we have included 17 types of rare-earth elements, their symbols and atomic number, and their name’s etymology.
Atomic number | Element Name | Symbol |
21 | Scandium | Sc |
39 | Yttrium | Y |
57 | Lanthanum | La |
58 | Cerium | Ce |
59 | Praseodymium | Pr |
60 | Neodymium | Nd |
61 | Promethium | Pm |
62 | Samarium | Sm |
63 | Europium | Eu |
64 | Gadolinium | Gd |
65 | Terbium | Tb |
66 | Dysprosium | Dy |
67 | Holmium | Ho |
68 | Erabium | Er |
69 | Thulium | Tm |
70 | Ytterbium | Yb |
71 | Lutenium | Lu |
Earth materials List
The crust of the earth has 4 main elements that are referred to as the materials of the earth. These earth materials involve minerals, soil, water, and rocks. The combination of all these materials makes possible life on Earth.
- Mineral: These are natural inorganic solids that are built on specific chemical composition and crystalline structure. minerals have a crystalline and non-living structure, which means the atoms that created the mineral are managed in an order, 3-D pattern that always repeats itself. Minerals are specified as naturally happening just because they are created by using natural geological procedures.
- Soil: It is also another part of the earth’s materials. It is the combination of broken down minerals and rocks and decomposed organic matter. The broken-down mineral and rocks are created when larger minerals and rocks are built into small pieces due to weathering or erosion.
- Rocks: rocks are specified as naturally created collectives of mineral-like instances or minerals. These rocks could be created with one or more types of mineral or without any mineral. There are several examples of rocks such as limestone, granite, and coal.
- Water: it is the most element of the earth’s materials. It is widely used to make several different kinds of materials.
Materials of the Earth’s Crust
Here, we will discuss the materials of the Earth’s Crust. It is the external layer of the earth’s planet. It includes the entire earth’s planet or surface. There are up to 60 kilometres of this layer in the great mountain ranges, varying from 6 to 12 kilometres on the seabed. Rocks, in turn, are composed of minerals, which make up the crust of the Earth. There are several kinds of minerals. Several things are made up of minerals such as aluminium foil, diamond rings, and talcum powder.
Conclusion
In this post, we deal with several types of earth materials, but we have also looked at the definition of earth materials. This post also describes the materials of the earth’s crust and list of the earth’s material list which consists of soil, water, rocks, and minerals. This article also discussed the REEs and provided a list of 17 types of elements of the rare-earth elements. We have recognized that the earth’s materials play an important role in resources that offer the core elements for agriculture, industry, and life.