Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am one of the editors here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. They say that the best weapon
Speaker 1: is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree.
Speaker 1: I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once.
Speaker 1: That's how Dad did it, and so America does it,
Speaker 1: and it's worked out pretty well so far. Nice. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to talk about rare earth metals and
Speaker 1: why they're important in electronics. Yes, this is actually sort
Speaker 1: of a weird topic for us. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: science e thing, but it's kind of a stuff. Yeah up, Um,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly uh, certainly something that's uh sort of
Speaker 1: a misnomer about rare earth metals. Yeah, yeah, it's. Um,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things you need to understand first.
Speaker 1: Do you want to go into that. Why it's a misnomer? Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a joke. They're neither rare nor are
Speaker 1: they an Earth all the And you know, some people
Speaker 1: call them elements, but I think it's fair fairly safe
Speaker 1: to call them metals. Yeah. A Swedish Army lieutenant discovered
Speaker 1: the these medals back in seventeen seven and gave them
Speaker 1: the the the categorical name of rare earth metals because
Speaker 1: at that point they were very rarely seen. And it
Speaker 1: turns out it's not because there's very little of it
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's just that they tend to be um
Speaker 1: mixed in with lots of other stuff, and you don't
Speaker 1: tend to find a whole bunch of it in a
Speaker 1: big quantity all in one spot. You find tend to
Speaker 1: and little bits of it spread out over a huge area.
Speaker 1: And if you wonder where the earth part comes from,
Speaker 1: I did too, Actually I looked it up in in
Speaker 1: Britannica and apparently this comes from the Greeks. And they
Speaker 1: would define an earth as something that, uh, you could
Speaker 1: heat up as much as they could heat something up
Speaker 1: with the technology they had available to them, and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't change significantly. Um, And it's not, I mean technically,
Speaker 1: once you've with the with the technology we have available
Speaker 1: to us, when you run into these oxides. Uh, with
Speaker 1: these rare earth elements in them, you can in fact
Speaker 1: break them down into individual elements. UM. So they're technically
Speaker 1: not an Earth as described by that, but you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe to the Greeks they would have been. I'm
Speaker 1: sure of that time. And let me give you a
Speaker 1: short list of some of the rare earth metals. They're
Speaker 1: technically seventeen of them, yes they are. There's a gallium, indium, selenium,
Speaker 1: to lurium, silicon, zinc, vanadium, lithium, platinum, neo, neodymium. Actually
Speaker 1: some of these technically don't fall into the rare earth
Speaker 1: metals either, like platinum, but they they're rare and they're
Speaker 1: using electronics, so they often get lumped together with them. Cobalt, manganese, syrium, europium, dysphorium, terbium, scandium, scandium.
Speaker 1: I didn't have that one, Scandium and atrium. I wonder
Speaker 1: if you pronounce the I or if it's like pronounced
Speaker 1: like an eye. I've never heard anyone say it. And
Speaker 1: the lanthanoids, which is the which are the elements with
Speaker 1: atomic numbers fifty seven through seventy one. Those are those
Speaker 1: are technically the rare earth metals. They tend to be
Speaker 1: heavy elements. Um, they and they're used for different things.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of these are used in order
Speaker 1: to make magnets. Yes, I'm sorry you were about that.
Speaker 1: Let's well, we're just gonna add another tiny historical tid bits.
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's kind of interesting. People
Speaker 1: pretty much ignored them up until about mid last century.
Speaker 1: I mean, they really weren't there. They weren't particularly useful
Speaker 1: for anything, and it was really hard to get enough
Speaker 1: of them to do anything with them in the first place.
Speaker 1: But they do make Jonathan pointing out very good permanent magnets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an important element in lots of electronics. Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 1: It's gonna happen that way. It's gonna happen all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, like, um, like, let's say your earbuds for
Speaker 1: an MP three player, Uh, part of the speaker is
Speaker 1: a tiny little magnet actually for not necessarily tiny, but
Speaker 1: with earbuds, they're definitely tiny. So you have to have
Speaker 1: a permanent magnet as part of the speaker system in
Speaker 1: these earbuds. Well, obviously you want a permanent magnet that's
Speaker 1: going to be powerful yet light. You don't want to have,
Speaker 1: you know, this incredibly heavy device. I mean it is
Speaker 1: stuck inside your ear. It's not um, it's not really comfortable,
Speaker 1: let's say, right, So you want to have some sort
Speaker 1: of material that's light and yet is able to have
Speaker 1: a permanent magnetic chart and a lot of these medals
Speaker 1: fall into that category. And in fact, that's what a
Speaker 1: lot of them are used for. And uh, but not
Speaker 1: just speakers. I mean, that's just one example that that's correct.
Speaker 1: I was going to add that. Um. Uh. I guess
Speaker 1: what started this whole thing for me was an article
Speaker 1: on c neet by Martin Lamonica. Um. And of course
Speaker 1: we you know, I think each of us delved into
Speaker 1: it quite substantially more to find out more. But he
Speaker 1: wrote an really interesting piece about it. Well, we can
Speaker 1: get into why more in in a few minutes and
Speaker 1: when we get into more of the application. But one
Speaker 1: of the benefits of using these medals is that their
Speaker 1: their strength to weight ratio is so is so uh useful. Um,
Speaker 1: They're very strong for their weight, and that's why, as
Speaker 1: as Jonathan pointed out, uh, they do make excellent applications
Speaker 1: for things like that. In portable electronics. There and lots
Speaker 1: and lots of different kinds of portable electronics UM four
Speaker 1: different things, which we'll get into in a minute here.
Speaker 1: But UM uh yeah, that's that's just one of those
Speaker 1: as reasons why they're so useful, right. Yeah. The weight
Speaker 1: issue is a is non trivial. Uh. For instance, you know,
Speaker 1: you hear about people talking about like the iPad, the
Speaker 1: iPad weighs a little over a pound, and people will
Speaker 1: talk about how after a little while it feels like
Speaker 1: it's it's getting heavy in your hands. UM. I mean
Speaker 1: without the these particular metals to help design well, to
Speaker 1: help in the design of electronics, UM, they would be
Speaker 1: even heavier. It would not In fact, it probably would
Speaker 1: not be compact. We would have much larger electronics uh,
Speaker 1: and they would be less efficient, they'd be heavier. UM.
Speaker 1: It just would not be It wouldn't be the same
Speaker 1: world that we live in today if we didn't if
Speaker 1: we had not discovered the applications of these rare earth
Speaker 1: metals UM and some of the other applications of all
Speaker 1: things like displays and UM various other electronic components. The
Speaker 1: EUROPEUM in particular was used to produce color displays, And
Speaker 1: that's actually one that's fairly rare. Uh. Some of these
Speaker 1: rare earth metals are legitimately rare in the sense that
Speaker 1: we just we haven't found big deposits of them. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: most electronics only use a couple of grams of this
Speaker 1: stuff at at most for a particular device. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a notable exception, but we'll get to that a second. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's one of the things too about the using
Speaker 1: these devices. You they wouldn't necessarily need to be plentiful, um,
Speaker 1: except for the obviously the cost um in order to
Speaker 1: spread them around into the electronics because they are are
Speaker 1: so light and useful at their size. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that that talking about the using them in displays. That's
Speaker 1: the first application I had seen about the mid twentieth
Speaker 1: century when they started making color television sets. Um, and
Speaker 1: they use some of these materials to make I believe
Speaker 1: I read the color red helped help make the red
Speaker 1: phosphour and uh in the TV screens. So that's that
Speaker 1: was one of the earliest, I think widespread uses of
Speaker 1: the rare earth metals. Yeah, today you you're gonna find
Speaker 1: it also in a lot of green technology stuff like
Speaker 1: solar panels, wind generators, fuel cells. UM, these all have
Speaker 1: some rare earth metals in them. And actually that's where
Speaker 1: it's funny, because these are supposed to be answers to
Speaker 1: things like the oil crisis, and UM, it's funny because
Speaker 1: they had were starting to hit a rare earth metal crisis.
Speaker 1: That's true. UM. One of the reasons for that is
Speaker 1: the the direct drive turbines UH and green technology for
Speaker 1: wind power. They use an awful lot of some of
Speaker 1: these devices. And I note now that some of my
Speaker 1: notes got cut off when I came in here, so
Speaker 1: the the number I had written down to use for
Speaker 1: this particular argument is now lost to me. What was
Speaker 1: that you happened to happen? Neodymium? Was the was the
Speaker 1: actual particular metal that because what's happening is let's let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about where these metals are currently coming from. Okay,
Speaker 1: They're almost all coming from China, Yes, Lamonica said about
Speaker 1: of the world's rare earth metals are coming from China
Speaker 1: right now. The figure I saw was between and so
Speaker 1: the vast majority of these metals are all coming out
Speaker 1: of China. And China doesn't just export these. China uses
Speaker 1: these metals in various electronics and applications as well. Right, what,
Speaker 1: it's one of the world's fastest growing economies, if not
Speaker 1: the fastest growing economy, and of course, uh, you know
Speaker 1: the popularity of electronics, um, you know in that country.
Speaker 1: Plus they've the government has been really pushing green technology.
Speaker 1: So with the applications and electronics and green technology, Uh,
Speaker 1: they've wanted to keep a lot of their rare earth
Speaker 1: metals to themselves to use in that and those applications.
Speaker 1: The problem being that they've they're plentiful in China and
Speaker 1: they've driven down the cost of mining them, so it's
Speaker 1: been sort of economically counterproductive for other countries to do that.
Speaker 1: They just import it from China. Yeah, that's a good point. Um,
Speaker 1: you might say, well, why why is it all coming
Speaker 1: from China? Does that just mean that all the metals
Speaker 1: are in China? No, I mean China is an enormous country.
Speaker 1: So that's that's part. Yeah, But the other element of
Speaker 1: that is, as us see, it just happens. It's like
Speaker 1: a drinking game. Every time you hear me say, element
Speaker 1: have a sip of fruit juice. Yes, So China's big country,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of rare earth metals there, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of rare earth metals across the
Speaker 1: entire globe. Because China has driven the cost of mining
Speaker 1: down so much, it made more sense to just go
Speaker 1: ahead and purchase the metals from China than it did
Speaker 1: to invest in mining operations in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: In fact, the United States had a rare earth metal mine.
Speaker 1: Yes it did, and it was shut down in two
Speaker 1: thousand two. Yes, I believe it's in Colorado. Uh that
Speaker 1: I can't tell you because I don't know for certain
Speaker 1: it is too. It definitely did shut down. No, wait,
Speaker 1: but one the one to shut down in two thousand
Speaker 1: two that I was reading was a complex in Mountain Pass, California, California.
Speaker 1: And that's right, the Colorado connection was the executive director
Speaker 1: of the Rare Earth Industry and Technology Association, Keith Delaney,
Speaker 1: who Lamonica quoted, and he is based in Colorado. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that that mine had shut down in in two thousand two.
Speaker 1: But they're bringing it back. Yes, because here's the deal is.
Speaker 1: As Chris was saying earlier about the wind generation um turbines,
Speaker 1: China's building a big green windmill type of network within
Speaker 1: the borders of China, and because it requires a lot
Speaker 1: of this or maybe not even a lot, but it
Speaker 1: re wires more neodymium than China actually produces. So that's
Speaker 1: why China is saying, you know what, We're not gonna
Speaker 1: export this anymore because we need it. In fact, we
Speaker 1: need more than what we produce in order to fulfill
Speaker 1: this project that we have planned. So um, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get any And so that's when the rest of
Speaker 1: the world said, oh, you know what, depending upon one
Speaker 1: supplier for this one really particular material is maybe not
Speaker 1: the best idea because that one supplier can get cut off.
Speaker 1: The same thing actually happened, Actually, a similar thing happened
Speaker 1: with Japan. Uh. And this may or may not be
Speaker 1: politically um motivated, right Japan. China actually shut down expert
Speaker 1: exportation of rare earth metals to Japan and uh that
Speaker 1: might have been because of a diplomatic dispute. China says, no,
Speaker 1: that's not the reason, but the rest of the world
Speaker 1: kind says, yeah, that's kind of the reason. Um. And
Speaker 1: so that raised a lot of fears and the rest
Speaker 1: of the world saying, well, if China can do that
Speaker 1: if they're just gonna shut down exporting out these materials
Speaker 1: that we depend on in order to make the various
Speaker 1: electronic devices that are coming out today, where does that
Speaker 1: leave us, because we're not getting it from anywhere else. Um,
Speaker 1: right now, what that means is that it would leave us,
Speaker 1: uh in panic mode. We wouldn't we wouldn't necessarily run
Speaker 1: out of the metals immediately, because, as I said, in
Speaker 1: most applications, we're only using a tiny amount of these medals,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a gram for a particular electronic device,
Speaker 1: with a big exception being hybrid and electric vehicles. Because
Speaker 1: supposedly a prius uses around thirty pounds of the stuff,
Speaker 1: So that's a lot compared to you know, an iPod
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, and uh, from from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: apparently according to to Delaney, that is one of the problems.
Speaker 1: Even when the mine out in California comes back online
Speaker 1: and they said sometime in the next couple of years,
Speaker 1: there's also one in Australia, even with those new efforts, um,
Speaker 1: it is unlikely that the producers of rare earth metals
Speaker 1: can keep up with the world's demand for them. So
Speaker 1: I would imagine that the cost will remain high until
Speaker 1: there there is a way to produce them efficiently. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: China has said, you know, no, no, we're not going
Speaker 1: to shut down all exports of rare earth metals completely
Speaker 1: to the world. You know, I would imagine not that
Speaker 1: they can still make quite a bit of money on
Speaker 1: the world market with that. But uh, you know, they're
Speaker 1: the the brewjaja that erupted for about I'd say maybe
Speaker 1: a couple of days. Uh, sort of has subsided now
Speaker 1: that they the government has said, you know no, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: don't read you know, that's not we're doing. You know,
Speaker 1: we will continue to export these things. But it has
Speaker 1: caused people to go, hey, you know, we really need
Speaker 1: to step this up. Maybe we need to actually invest
Speaker 1: in this technology. So this could mean one of many things.
Speaker 1: For one thing, China now that I mean essentially has
Speaker 1: the world over a pit right now, China could say,
Speaker 1: you know what we're gonna We're gonna increase the cost
Speaker 1: of these because there is a real value to this
Speaker 1: material and the and the value is greater than what
Speaker 1: we're charging and um and until that until that price
Speaker 1: exceeds what it would be to do the mining here
Speaker 1: in the United States or other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: It would still make more sense to buy to to
Speaker 1: pay up right, So the price would keep going up
Speaker 1: and we would keep paying because we'd say, well, the
Speaker 1: alternative is to mind it ourselves, and it's still not
Speaker 1: cheaper to mind it ourselves. That would be to pay
Speaker 1: pay extra money to China. UM. I'm sorry you were
Speaker 1: about to say, well, no, I was. I was going
Speaker 1: to get into something else that we had planned on
Speaker 1: talking about, which was the reason that this is sort
Speaker 1: of a sensitive issue too, is that it's not easy
Speaker 1: to get pure uh forms of the rare earth elements um,
Speaker 1: simply because they are most often found as oxides, so
Speaker 1: and they're mixed in with other things that can be
Speaker 1: mixed in with thorium and I believe uranium. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's something that's difficult to do, and it's
Speaker 1: not a cheap process where you just go out and
Speaker 1: get a shovel and a wheelbarrow and start digging it up.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the things. Also that China has
Speaker 1: an advantage over the rest of the world. It appears
Speaker 1: that most of the rare earth metal deposits in China
Speaker 1: are not accompanied by radioactive uranium or or thorium. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they don't have to worry about radiation very much.
Speaker 1: That's not the way it is with through most of
Speaker 1: the world, which means that if we start mining these
Speaker 1: rare earth metals, we have to take into consideration the
Speaker 1: fact that there is radioactive material there as well. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that raises safety concerns. You have to figure out
Speaker 1: how you're going to store and or dispose of that
Speaker 1: radioact to material. How do you separate the rare earth
Speaker 1: metals in a reasonably safe way that's not going to
Speaker 1: drive the cost up so much that uh. You know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: what this can mean to you as a consumer is
Speaker 1: that the electronics that you purchased today could end up
Speaker 1: being way more expensive down the road once we start
Speaker 1: hitting these these limits with the these metals. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in China, the way that they mine these rare earth
Speaker 1: metals can be really destructive for the environment as well.
Speaker 1: What typically what they'll do is they'll cut down the
Speaker 1: vegetation in an area and they'll raise up the top
Speaker 1: soil and they use acids to leach out the rare
Speaker 1: earth metals UM and those acids can run off into
Speaker 1: the nearby water table. And that can kill off um plants,
Speaker 1: and it can affect animals um it's it can it
Speaker 1: containt water supplies. There's also some allegations that some of
Speaker 1: these rare earth metal minds in China, for some of
Speaker 1: the particularly rare metals, that they're actually um somewhat overseen
Speaker 1: by a criminal element. Chinese gangs essentially are are running
Speaker 1: these um some of these rare earth metal minds. So
Speaker 1: that's another issue, is that when we start purchasing these
Speaker 1: these electronic devices over here, technically we're kind of funding
Speaker 1: a criminal organization overseas well. I would imagine too that
Speaker 1: it's not it's probably like most industries where there is
Speaker 1: a group and then you know some of the others
Speaker 1: are not. And the problem is that the problem is
Speaker 1: that manufacturers over here can't necessarily tell where they're rare
Speaker 1: earth metals. Like it's it's not like you can go
Speaker 1: to the rare earth metal market and get the hey, look,
Speaker 1: this is free range thorium over your not thorium obviously,
Speaker 1: but yes, I don't need to worry about the fact
Speaker 1: that this metal came from this my because this mine's
Speaker 1: a legitimate mind. There's no criminal element here there's no
Speaker 1: way to tell, right, So it's I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: placing blame on the manufacturers necessarily because they have to
Speaker 1: get the stuff from somewhere. Um, I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: it's a bad system overall because there's no way to
Speaker 1: know for sure whether or not. Uh, you're enabling this
Speaker 1: criminal element of like speak. Oh man, how many times
Speaker 1: am I gonna use that word? The sad thing is,
Speaker 1: I think you're actually catching it by no doing an
Speaker 1: accidentally and then catching it. I did find, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, I didn't accidentally delete my notes. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The volume, the volume I was stunned to see was
Speaker 1: Keith Delaney again speaking of the the direct drive wind
Speaker 1: turbines used in wind power. Um. Because each megawatt of
Speaker 1: electricity generated requires half a ton of permanent magnets. Wow,
Speaker 1: I see that's all. That's a whole lot of um.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of uh these rare earth manimls.
Speaker 1: And the thing is UM to that, you know, talking
Speaker 1: about the electronics, The cost of your electronics going up,
Speaker 1: the cost of the electricity depending on where you live
Speaker 1: and what's being used to generate it. Uh, cost of
Speaker 1: electricity to power those electronics could also go up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean it's it's something that matters to us,
Speaker 1: but we don't normally think about it. And going back
Speaker 1: to the green element for just a second, it also
Speaker 1: means that going green could end up becoming much more expensive,
Speaker 1: depending on whether or not China, uh, you know, allows
Speaker 1: exports of these rare earth metals or the green technology. Um,
Speaker 1: if we do start opening up more minds across the world,
Speaker 1: it'll all depend upon how efficient those mining processes are. Uh. Otherwise, again,
Speaker 1: we could see that this green technology, the price of
Speaker 1: green technology may rise exponentially. So then you're getting to
Speaker 1: a point where you're saying, all right, does is it
Speaker 1: economically feasible to switch from a petroleum based economy or
Speaker 1: petroleum based fuel source to renewable in g doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense financially. And the scary thing is is if this
Speaker 1: these prices go up high enough, the answer to that
Speaker 1: is going to be no, it doesn't make sense financially
Speaker 1: until it gets so bad with the the you know,
Speaker 1: the oil situation that it almost becomes like a panic
Speaker 1: to try and fund green technology so that you can
Speaker 1: you know, close that gap. And one of the the
Speaker 1: objections some people have to using oil as an energy
Speaker 1: source is that it means that we're dependent upon foreign
Speaker 1: countries for two in order to get our fuel right,
Speaker 1: and that we're essentially funding some of these countries that
Speaker 1: have anti American sentiments. So we're giving money to people
Speaker 1: who don't like us very much, is what that kind
Speaker 1: of boils down to, the same sort of problem happens here.
Speaker 1: If China is the only supplier and we are have
Speaker 1: to play by China's game, then we are giving money
Speaker 1: to a foreign power and we're dependent upon that foreign
Speaker 1: power for energy needs. It's no better than the oil
Speaker 1: as far as that part of the equation is concerned. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: there's the whole other part of it. You know, you're
Speaker 1: not generating pollution by using this kind of power, and
Speaker 1: that that's a totally different argument that that. You know,
Speaker 1: you can still say, well, green technology is superior, but
Speaker 1: from a from a dependence on foreign nation perspective, it's
Speaker 1: the same. Yeah. And of course, uh, we're speaking from
Speaker 1: a point of view from the United States, and many
Speaker 1: of our listeners come from other countries, but in many
Speaker 1: cases there a lot of them aren't importing a lot
Speaker 1: of their rare earth metals from China and other countries too.
Speaker 1: It's not something like in the case of Japan, apparently
Speaker 1: there are not many. It's hot. They really are very
Speaker 1: rare in Japan itself, and they do rely on imports
Speaker 1: there more than they would in other countries like we do.
Speaker 1: Apparently India is heavy a reasonably good supply and they
Speaker 1: are are minding them themselves as well. But UM, I
Speaker 1: don't know about a lot of the other countries around
Speaker 1: the world. So yeah, I mean it's there's a security
Speaker 1: situation there too, for whatever countries that may need this
Speaker 1: for you know, I'm sure a lot of defense electronics
Speaker 1: rely on on these medals. There was actually a report recently,
Speaker 1: uh in the United States government from the Department of
Speaker 1: Defense saying that, um, they were not worried about this
Speaker 1: current situation and that they did not see it impacting
Speaker 1: the national security. Uh. I don't know how they could
Speaker 1: have said anything else without generating a panic. So I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that they are being optimistic or they're painting
Speaker 1: it a certain way. I'm just saying that, UM, I
Speaker 1: really hope for a resolution of this problem. Well, I uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's interesting that these medals which
Speaker 1: really have been you know, they've known about out for
Speaker 1: a very long time. Uh, you know, I have just
Speaker 1: sort of come into providence prominence in the last hundred
Speaker 1: years or so, and now they are part of, you know,
Speaker 1: one of you know, some of the more important substances
Speaker 1: we've really Yeah, and to think that, you know, three
Speaker 1: years ago, we had no idea what they are, and
Speaker 1: now we depend very heavily upon them. Uh. Actually, I
Speaker 1: guess the only hope I have otherwise is that the
Speaker 1: whole carbon nanotube thing works out to the point where
Speaker 1: we find out carbon nanotubes are superior for all of
Speaker 1: these different applications. I know that, I know carbon nanotube
Speaker 1: strength to weight ratio is insane depending on how you
Speaker 1: align the the the graphite sheets. Oh yeah, yeah, Well
Speaker 1: that that's another fascinating topic that maybe we can talk
Speaker 1: about all of that. Maybe another that's again another science, Yeah,
Speaker 1: carbonano tubes. Yes, Also it makes me want to quote more.
Speaker 1: Yeah nano nano. Oh. Oh, I almost saw that one coming.
Speaker 1: It was just about the hand me before it really did. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think that that wraps up this discussion because I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think I can talk anymore. I was
Speaker 1: relying on the element of surprise drink. So, guys, I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this episode on Rare Earth Metals. We
Speaker 1: will talk to you again soon. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics or comments or questions, you can contact
Speaker 1: us on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff h s W or you can shoot us an email.
Speaker 1: That email address is tech stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and Chris and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again for really soon. For more on this and thousands
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