What is Ytterbium atom?

     

Ytterbium is a chemical element with the symbol Yb and atomic number 70. It is the fourteenth and penultimate element in the lanthanide series, which is the basis of the relative stability of its  +2 oxidation state.  However, like the other lanthanides, its most common oxidation state is +3 as in its oxide, halides, and other compounds of other late lanthanides, with nine water molecules.  Because of its closed-shell electron configuration, is density and melting and boiling points doffer significantly from those of most other lanthanides.  

     In1878, the Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac separated from the rare earth "erbia" another independent component, which he called"Ytterbia", for Ytterby, the village in Sweden near where he found the new compnent of erbium.  He suspected that ytterbia was a compound of a new element that he called "ytterbium".  In 1907, the new earth "lutecia" was separated from ytterbia, from which the element "lutecium" was extracted by Georges Urbain, Carl Auer von Welsbach, and Charles James. 

     Natural ytterbium is a mixture of seven stable isotopes, which altogether are present at concentrations of 0.3 parts per million.  This element is mined in china, the United States, Brazil, and india in form of the minerals monazite, euxenite, and xenotime.  The ytterbium concentration is low because it is found only among many other rare earth elements; moreover, it is among the least abundant.