Scandium
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40 free Scandium trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Scandium is the element that proved a prediction. A gap was left for it in the periodic table before anyone had seen it, and when it finally turned up in a Scandinavian mineral the fit was close enough to change how chemists thought about the table itself. This quiz gathers the fun facts about scandium that people go looking for: who predicted it and who found it, why a metal that is not especially scarce is so hard to get hold of, and where it ends up, from fighter jets and sports gear to stadium lamps, lasers and experimental clocks. It suits chemistry students revising element 21, quiz writers after something fresher than the usual metals, and anyone who enjoys a science surprise. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Scandium, named after Scandinavia, was discovered in 1879 by a chemist working in which country?
Sweden
Sweden's Uppsala University is where the new metal's oxide was first separated, and its finder named the element after Scandia, the Latin for Scandinavia.
Q 02Which Russian chemist left a gap for scandium in his periodic table years before its discovery?
Dmitri Mendeleev
Dmitri Mendeleev forecast the missing element's atomic weight and the formula of its oxide, and scandium fitted both when it turned up a decade later.
Q 03Scandium-aluminium alloys were used in which Soviet fighter jets, including the 21 and 29 models?
Mikoyan MiG
Mikoyan MiG fighters used alloys holding just 0.1% to 0.5% scandium, a pinch that is enough to strengthen the aluminium.
Q 04Laser crystals containing scandium were made for the Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed after which film series?
Star Wars
Star Wars became the nickname of Ronald Reagan's 1983 missile-shield plan after Senator Ted Kennedy mocked it, and its laser research used garnet crystals grown with scandium.
Q 05Scandium ranks only 50th among the elements on Earth but is the 23rd most common element in which body?
The Sun
The Sun ranks scandium 23rd among its elements, far above the metal's 50th place on Earth as a whole, though it climbs to 35th in the crust.
Q 06Scandium-aluminium alloy, prized for being light and strong, is used to make bats for which sport?
Baseball
Baseball bats made with a dash of scandium are stronger than plain aluminium ones, and the same alloy goes into lacrosse sticks and tent poles.
Q 07A hypothetical hollow cage of scandium and carbon atoms is named after the ball used in which sport?
Volleyball
Volleyball inspired the name volleyballene, a predicted molecule of 20 scandium and 60 carbon atoms that could one day store hydrogen.
Q 08Which American gunmaker, famous for revolvers, has built ultralight handguns with scandium-alloy frames?
Smith & Wesson
Smith & Wesson gave its 340PD revolver a scandium-alloy frame, so the gun weighs about 12 ounces unloaded yet is chambered for .357 Magnum.
Q 09Scandium is rarely mined for itself and is often recovered from the waste of which radioactive metal?
Uranium
Uranium mill tailings, the sandy leftovers of ore processing, hold enough scandium to extract, which matters because the richest scandium minerals go largely unmined.
Q 10The one stable form of scandium found in nature is created in which cosmic events?
Supernovae
Supernovae forge scandium-45, the only kind that lasts, and a little more is chipped off heavier iron-group nuclei when cosmic rays strike them.
Q 11Scandium, element 21, is the first member of which large family in the middle of the periodic table?
Transition metals
Transition metals begin with scandium, yet it behaves unlike most of them, sticking almost entirely to a single +3 state where its neighbours show several.
Q 12Scandium is grouped with the 15 lanthanides and one other metal under which misleading collective name?
Rare-earth elements
Rare-earth elements is a misnomer: the 17 metals are fairly plentiful in Earth's crust, just thinly spread and hard to separate from one another.
Q 13Which element sits directly below scandium in the periodic table and often turns up in the same ores?
Yttrium
Q 21Which chemist discovered scandium in 1879 by separating a new oxide from scarce Scandinavian minerals?
Lars Fredrik Nilson
Lars Fredrik Nilson prepared just 2 grams of the pure oxide, and later swapped exotic metals for farm science, writing nearly sixty papers on soils and manures.
Q 22Scandium was first detected in which mineral, named from the Greek for 'hospitable to strangers'?
Euxenite
Euxenite earned its welcoming name by holding so many uncommon elements at once, and scandium was detected in it alongside a second mineral, gadolinite.
Q 23Which laboratory technique revealed scandium in 1879 by showing a pattern of lines no known element produced?
Spectral analysis
Yttrium was discovered first, in the very ores that also hide scandium, which is much scarcer in them and probably eluded chemists for that reason.
Q 14Which strong, light metal, next after scandium in the periodic table, did scandium's discoverer help isolate?
Titanium
Titanium, element 22, was first isolated in fairly pure form in 1887, eight years after the scandium find, by the same chemist and his colleague Sven Otto Pettersson.
Q 15Which metal, one place before scandium in the periodic table, is used to free scandium from its fluoride?
Calcium
Calcium pulls the fluorine away at high temperature, leaving scandium metal; the fluoride itself is made from the oxide, the form in which scandium is sold.
Q 16Besides Madagascar, which European country is a noted source of the few minerals rich in scandium?
Norway
Norway's Iveland and Evje og Hornnes district has the scandium-rich mineral, yet nobody mines it there; supply comes instead as a by-product of other metals.
Q 17Which scarce, collectable mineral of granite pegmatites can hold up to 45% scandium oxide?
Thortveitite
Thortveitite takes its name from the engineer Olaus Thortveit, and clear gem-quality crystals are so unusual that one found in 2004 earned a report in a gemmology journal.
Q 18What placeholder name did scandium carry while it was still only a predicted gap in the periodic table?
Eka-boron
Eka-boron marked the gap one place below boron in the early table, and the atomic mass of 44 forecast for it proved almost exactly right.
Q 19The prefix 'eka' in the name first given to undiscovered scandium means 'one' in which ancient language?
Sanskrit
Sanskrit supplied the prefixes eka, dvi and tri, meaning one, two and three, to show how many places below a known element each predicted one would sit.
Q 20Which discoverer of holmium and thulium realised that scandium matched an element predicted years earlier?
Per Teodor Cleve
Per Teodor Cleve spotted the match and wrote to tell the predictor, since scandium's own discoverer was apparently unaware of the forecast.
Spectral analysis of the newly separated oxide showed a pattern of lines never reported before, the evidence that it held an undiscovered metal.
Q 24Metallic scandium was first produced in 1937 by which process, applied to a molten mixture of chlorides?
Electrolysis
Electrolysis of molten potassium, lithium and scandium chlorides at 700 to 800 °C finally yielded the metal, 58 years after the element was identified.
Q 25Scalmalloy, a scandium-aluminium alloy for printing metal parts, is sold by a spin-off of which planemaker?
Airbus
Airbus spin-off Apworks has marketed Scalmalloy since 2013 as a powder that lasers fuse layer by layer into strong, light components.
Q 26In metal-halide lamps, scandium is used as a salt of which halogen, alongside the matching sodium salt?
Iodine
Iodine compounds of the two metals give the lamp a white light whose colour rendering is good enough for filming with cameras.
Q 27Scandium trifluoride does what unusual thing when heated, over a range of more than 1,000 degrees?
It shrinks
It shrinks because its fluorine atoms swing sideways as they warm, tugging the scandium atoms on either side closer together.
Q 28Zirconia doped with scandium oxide serves as a high-efficiency electrolyte in which clean-energy devices?
Fuel cells
Fuel cells of the solid-oxide type gain ionic conductivity and thermal stability from the scandium, and they can run on a variety of fuels.
Q 29Erbium lasers built on a scandium garnet crystal cut both hard and soft tissue in which branch of medicine?
Dentistry
Dentistry uses these Er,Cr:YSGG lasers to prepare cavities and in endodontics, the treatment of a tooth's inner pulp and root canals.
Q 30Bayan Obo, one of only three mines producing scandium in 2003, lies in which country's Inner Mongolia region?
China
China's Bayan Obo was discovered as an iron deposit in 1927, and scandium is recovered there only as a by-product, as at the other mines that yield it.