The rare earths aren't really all that rare. While they're widely distributed all over the earth they're rare enough in the sense that there aren't that many locations where you can find them in concentrated deposits that make mining profitable. And when you do find those deposits the refining steps yield misch metal which is sort of an onomatopoeia for what it actually is: a mishmash of seventeen different metals. Getting those isolated from each other has been rated as one of the major chemical engineering headaches of metallurgical science!In any case, cerium will account for about half of the misch metal alloy and is the most abundant of those 17 elements. Cerium is also shy about being seen naked so it covers itself with an oxygenated apron yielding a dull coat when stored in mineral oil. Left in the open air it disintegrates right back into its primal earthen state!Offering cerium in its unoxidized state requires storage in an inert atmosphere like argon. And that's exactly what we have to offer here with this 3-5g sample of 99.99% purity embedded in a 2x2 inch (50x50mm) block of crystal clear Lucite acrylic.
