Calamine (mineral) Calamine (mineral) Calamine is a historic name for an ore of zinc. The name "calamine" was derived from "lapis calaminaris", a Latin corruption of Greek "cadmia (καδμία)", the old name for zinc ores in general. The name of the Belgian town of Kelmis, "La Calamine" in French, which was home to a zinc mine, comes from that. In the 18th and 19th centuries large ore mines could be found near the German village of Breinigerberg. During the early 19th century it was discovered that what had been thought to be one ore was actually two distinct minerals: Although chemically and
Scandium Scandium Scandium is a chemical element with symbol Sc and atomic number 21. A silvery-white metallic d-block element, it has historically been classified as a rare-earth element, together with yttrium and the lanthanides. It was discovered in 1879 by spectral analysis of the minerals euxenite and gadolinite from Scandinavia. Scandium is present in most of the deposits of rare-earth and uranium compounds, but it is extracted from these ores in only a few mines worldwide. Because of the low availability and the difficulties in the preparation of metallic scandium, which was first done in 1937, applications for scandium were not