Crossword-Solution: CERIA 5 letters, 8 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 7

The light of any combustible consumed on the "incandescent" system is derived from glowing particles of ceria, thoria, or similar metallic oxides; and the character or shade of the light they emit is a function, apart from the temperature to which they are raised, of their specific chemical nature.

Caro has stated that to derive the best results a mantle needs to contain a larger proportion of ceria than the 1 per cent.

Other authorities hold that mantles for acetylene, should contain other rare earths besides the thoria and ceria of which the coal-gas mantles almost wholly consist.

The rare earths became household utensils and it made a big difference with our monthly gas bills whether the ceria and the thoria in the burner mantles were absolutely pure or contained traces of some of the other elements that were so difficult to separate.

The non-chemical reader is apt to be confused by the strange names and their varied terminations, but he need not be when he learns that the new metals are given names ending in _-um_, such as sodium, cerium, thorium, and that their oxides (compounds with oxygen, the earths) are given the termination _-a_, like soda, ceria, thoria.