Lanthanides
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Lanthanides trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The lanthanides are the stretch of the periodic table that school lessons tend to skip, and most people never give them a second thought. Yet these metals are at work inside phones, cars, hospitals and power stations, and their history is full of odd names, long hunts and lucky finds. This quiz turns the best fun facts about the lanthanides into questions: where the elements got their names, who found them, what each one is used for, and why chemists struggled for so long to tell them apart. Every answer comes with a short explanation. It suits chemistry students revising the series, teachers looking for a lesson starter, and anyone who enjoys the stories behind the elements. Most questions need curiosity more than specialist knowledge.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Terbium, erbium and ytterbium are all named after Ytterby, a quarry village in which country?
Sweden
Sweden's Ytterby holds a naming record: yttrium is called after the same village, so one small place appears four times on the periodic table.
Q 02Neodymium is alloyed with iron and boron to make the strongest commercial type of which component in headphones?
Magnets
Magnets made of neodymium, iron and boron were developed independently in 1984 by General Motors and Sumitomo, and now sit inside hard drives and cordless tools too.
Q 03Europium transformed colour television in the 1960s by supplying an efficient, vivid phosphor for which colour?
Red
Red europium phosphors lit up cathode-ray screens from the 1960s. The same glow appears on euro banknotes under ultraviolet light, as a check against forgery.
Q 04Promethium is named after Prometheus, the Titan of Greek mythology who stole what from Mount Olympus?
Fire
Fire was a pointed choice for an element born in a nuclear reactor: the name was meant to symbolise both the daring and the possible misuse of human intellect.
Q 05Ferrocerium, a cerium alloy that showers sparks when scraped, is the so-called flint in which everyday objects?
Lighters
Lighters use a man-made 'flint' that works backwards: real flint is a rock that strikes sparks off steel, while ferrocerium is itself scraped away by a hardened steel wheel.
Q 06Gadolinium compounds are injected into patients to sharpen the images from which kind of hospital examination?
MRI scan
MRI scan contrast agents built around gadolinium spread through the body after injection, but they do not readily cross an intact blood–brain barrier.
Q 07Which country has supplied most of the world's lanthanides since undercutting rival mines' prices in the 1990s?
China
China supplied around 90% of global demand in 2019, after its low prices in the 1990s forced many mines in other countries to close.
Q 08Lutetium, the final lanthanide, takes its name from Lutetia, the Roman-era name for which European capital?
Paris
Paris won a naming fight: French chemist Georges Urbain chose the name, while an Austrian rival who found the element independently wanted to call it cassiopeium.
Q 09Surgeons use the beam of a holmium laser to break up which painful deposits inside the body?
Kidney stones
Kidney stones are a routine target for holmium laser surgery, which is valued for its precision and for doing minimal damage to the tissue around the stone.
Q 10Lanthanum goes by the kilogram into the nickel–metal hydride battery packs of which fuel-saving vehicles?
Hybrid cars
Hybrid cars are rolling lanthanum stores: the battery of a 2008 Toyota Prius needs 10 to 15 kilograms of the metal.
Q 11The lanthanides, scandium and yttrium are known together by which collective name, widely called a misnomer?
Rare earths
Rare earths are not actually scarce: the label stuck because they are found only in compounds, never as pure metals, and are difficult to isolate and purify.
Q 12To stop the periodic table becoming impractically wide, the lanthanides are customarily printed in which position?
Below the main body
Below the main body is purely a formatting convention: a rarely used wide version of the table slots the lanthanides into their true place in its sixth row.
Q 13Which series, home to uranium and plutonium, sits directly beneath the lanthanides on a standard periodic table?
Actinides
Q 21Didymium filters, which cut out the yellow glare of hot sodium, protect the eyes of which craftspeople?
Glassblowers
Glassblowers work in a flame turned yellow by sodium in the hot glass; didymium removes that one colour without harming general vision, unlike dark welding goggles.
Q 22Carl Auer von Welsbach, who split didymium into praseodymium and neodymium, also invented which lighting device?
Gas mantle
Gas mantle fabric, loaded with thorium and cerium oxides, glows bright white when heated by a flame; it brought light to the streets of Europe in the late 19th century.
Q 23Promethium, the only lanthanide with no stable isotopes, was first produced in 1945 at which American laboratory?
Oak Ridge
Actinides differ from the row above in one striking way: every lanthanide except promethium occurs in nature in appreciable quantities, while most of the lower row barely occurs at all.
Q 14Cerium, the most abundant lanthanide, is about as plentiful in Earth's crust as which familiar metal?
Copper
Copper and cerium each make up roughly 68 parts per million of the crust, which leaves cerium more abundant than everyday metals such as lead and tin.
Q 15Even lutetium, one of the scarcest lanthanides, is more common in Earth's crust than which of these metals?
Silver
Silver is the scarcer of the two in the crust, yet lutetium was far slower to reach the laboratory shelf: the pure metal was first produced only in 1953.
Q 16Erbium-doped amplifiers boost the signals travelling long distances through which kind of cable?
Fibre-optic
Fibre-optic lines lose the least light at a wavelength of about 1,550 nanometres, and erbium ions happen to amplify light in just that region.
Q 17Lanthanum oxide is a prized ingredient in which components of high-end cameras and telescopes?
Lenses
Lenses made with lanthanum glass bend light strongly while splitting it into colours very little, a pairing of high refractive index and low dispersion.
Q 18The word lanthanide comes from the Greek lanthanein, a verb with which meaning?
To lie hidden
To lie hidden first described lanthanum, found lurking as an impurity inside a cerium compound; the whole series later took its name from that one element.
Q 19Dysprosium's discoverer needed more than 30 attempts to isolate it, then gave it a Greek name with which meaning?
Hard to get
Hard to get stayed true for decades: dysprosium was identified in 1886 but not isolated in pure form until ion-exchange techniques arrived in the 1950s.
Q 20Praseodymium's name describes the green colour of its salts by comparing them to which vegetable?
Leek
Leek green is the first half of the name; the second half, Greek for twin, was inherited from didymium, the supposed element it was split from.
Oak Ridge chemists found it among the fission products of uranium reactor fuel, but they were too busy with military research to announce the discovery until 1947.
Q 24Nearly all lanthanides fall in which section of the periodic table, named after the electron orbital being filled?
f-block
f-block membership has one exception in the series: lutetium is usually classed as a d-block element, yet it behaves so much like the other fourteen that it is counted with them.
Q 25Running from lanthanum to lutetium, the lanthanide series covers which span of atomic numbers?
57 to 71
57 to 71 takes in fifteen metals whose outermost electron shell has the same configuration in every case, which is why they behave so much alike.
Q 26Because 4f electrons shield the nucleus poorly, what happens to lanthanide ions as atomic number rises?
They get smaller
They get smaller, an effect called the lanthanide contraction. It leaves hafnium so close in size to zirconium that hafnium went undiscovered until 1923, 134 years after its twin.
Q 27Ytterbium atoms, laser-cooled and trapped in a lattice of light, set a 2013 stability record for which instruments?
Atomic clocks
Atomic clocks built on about 10,000 ytterbium atoms at NIST would stay accurate to within a second over a period comparable to the age of the universe.
Q 28Gadolinium is used in nuclear reactor shielding because it is exceptionally good at absorbing which particles?
Neutrons
Neutrons are captured by gadolinium-157 more readily than by any other stable nuclide; only xenon-135 does better, and it is radioactive.
Q 29Mountain Pass, the mine that made the United States the leading lanthanide producer for decades, is in which state?
California
California's deposit was found by accident: prospectors searching for uranium in 1949 noticed unusually high radioactivity, and it turned out to mark a different prize.
Q 30Gadolinium honours Johan Gadolin, first to analyse the mineral gadolinite, a chemist from which present-day country?
Finland
Finland regards Gadolin as the founder of its chemistry research. The 'new earth' he identified in that mineral was the first compound of the whole family ever found.