Did you ever know that Apple's iPhone consists of 75 periodic elements? Well, according to Alex King at the Ames Laboratory, this actually seems to be the case. That's like two-third of the entire periodic table.
Even if you take the iPhone's exterior into consideration, the device heavily relies on materials that aren't available in the U.S. commercially. For starters, aluminium is obtained from bauxite, but in the United States, there aren't any major bauxite mines.
As we all know, iPhones are primarily manufactured in China, which produces 85 percent of the world's supply. Therefore, the periodic elements known as rare earths might have been obtained from there as well.
As far as the importance of some of these elements is concerned, a rare earth like Neodymium is required for the magnets on the iPhone, which is essential to make it vibrate, whereas Lanthanum is used in the camera lens. Additionally, for the iPhone's transistors, a rare metal called Hafnium is used.
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