Why It Takes 75 Elements To Make Your Cell Phone

Turns out there are some pretty rare elements in your smartphone. How rare are they and what are they doing in your phone?



Read More:
The All-American iPhone
"According to King at the Ames Lab, an iPhone has about 75 elements in it-two-thirds of the periodic table. Even just the outside of an iPhone relies heavily on materials that aren't commercially available in the U.S. Aluminum comes from bauxite, and there are no major bauxite mines in the U.S. (Recycled aluminum would have to be the domestic source.)"

For metals of the smartphone age, no Plan B
"Many of the metals needed to feed the surging global demand for high-tech products, from smart phones to solar panels, cannot be replaced, leaving some markets vulnerable if resources become scarce, according to a new Yale study."

Where to Find Rare Earth Elements
"Every time I see a commercial for a new cell phone, I feel a bit nauseous. I love a new cell phone just like the next person, but because of my training as a materials scientist, I feel like a worker in a sausage factory. Cell phones, like sausages, may be great, but you don't really want to know what it takes to make them."
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Written By: William Poor

[teamplayer]

There's a reason electronics recycling is crucial. A few grams of these rare elements may seem like nothing, but when you have 500 million "junk" electronics getting tossed, a few grams starts to look like a gold mine.

[adithya]

Gonna see if future phones gonna fill up that periodic table with nuclear elements like Uranium, thorium..

[younggrindz]

I’m supposed to be doing my assessment but instead my teacher made ME watch

[kidsiniceland]

On the period table of elemets slide Potassium is not marked as an element in a iPhone but when elements in the display are listed potassium is included. So is potassium included or not?

[artificernathaniel]

Aluminum and Oxygen is Corundum (Al2O3) which most people know the little hexagonal crystal as Ruby when red or Sapphire when any color but red. Its hardness of 9 (just below diamond) is why it is excellent to alloy into the "glass" that covers your camera lens or phone screen, so it is not scratched by someone jingling keys over it. (iron and steels have hardness of 5-6 (sometimes 7). Glass is 5, so iron scratches glass. Hardness is not a measurement of ductility though, so don't drop those brittle but hard diamonds and sapphires!
The more you know.

[ethanwagner]

That moment when you realize that we could run out of technology if we don't redesign them to use elements that are more common.

[DoneDragon]

kinda fitting though that technology that connects the world is also made from pieces from around the world, poetic

[Strife_]

I love Dnews! Wish they would make longer videos and update maybe twice a day or more!

[dominykaskucinas]

when he mentions Apple at 1:56 suggested video pops up saying "Does an apple a day really keeps the doctor away" ? lol really relevant in this context :D

[Sophistry]

I think eventually, it will be financially viable to dig through old 20th century landfills looking for electronics that have been thrown away to reclaim the elements in them. You'll start to see more buyback and recycle programs for electronics too.

[albinkappling]

She is holding her phone upside down :D

[sandralynihove]

I'm Interested, I want to learn how all this elements work together to make communication and especially life easy today

[MattLeveck]

@DNews could you do a show on mono and diglycerides and the health effects they have?

[yumri]

well they could use pure graphene to replace tin lines and silicone chips but then as it is not a easy thing to make graphene the price would sky rocket so they use the cheaper and already known resistance and power density of tin, gold, and silicone

[outlaws]

I have a really old IBM computer sitting around somewhere. Perhaps I'll keep it for a few more decades and see if I can capitalize on it.

[factsverse]

1:57 Apple is still working on it, but Intel has been doing it for years.

[BatMandor]

0:02 we ain't giving you any elements after watching this use the tape! :/

[MoreTickle]

People act as if once a phone is created, all the elements within said phone are useless. But we can recycle them in fact we should be recycling these items, every single piece of technology should pretty much be upcycled and companies should provide discounts for handing in your device over, I'm willing to bet it would be a lot cheaper to recycle the parts and use those elements in creating new devices.

[dakotamew]

11/10 tape reference // Tape fixes all your problems if its not fixed use more tape :D

[afstar]

0:28 she holding the iphone upside dwn :D or may be they censored it i dnt knw :P