Rare earth element is one kind of strategic materials. Some rare earth elements have been industrialized. They play major roles in permanent magnetism material, lightening, catalysis and hydrogen storage material. In order to understand the rare earth elements more, it is necessary to study the structures of the valence electrons and atoms of them. The valence electron structures and properties of yttrium, scandium and lanthanum group rare earth elements are studied with the empirical electron theory （EET）. Based on the valence electron parameters, the melting points and cohesive energies of these rare earth elements are calculated. The calculations accord with those of the measurements. According to the analyses of EET, the structures and the physical properties of rare earth elements depend on the electron emission or transformation between the lattice-electrons and coherent electrons in outer orbital. It is exhibited that the melting point tends to increase with the lattice electron-covalent electron transformation, however, the valence status of rare earth element affects significantly the electron distribution and property. The covalent electron hoppings occur at divalent europium, ytterbium and samarium, and their melting points are related to the electron transformation covalence-electrons. It is different from the others with trivalent status. The theoretical analysis reveals that the cohesive energy is related to the 4f electrons. The contribution to cohesive energy increases with the number of 4f electrons increasing, which may be due to the shrinking effect of the atomic radius for the lanthanum group. The study implies that the characteriscs of rare earth element are due to the relation between their melt pointing and conhesive energy and electronic structure.%稀上是重要的战略物资资源，有一些己形成产业，在永磁、发光、催化和储氢等方面有着重要的作用．对稀土及其化合物的研究一直是国内外研究的热点．对稀土原予结构和价电子结构的研究有助于对其的更深刻的理解．依据固体与分子经验电子理论，对镧系稀土和sc，Y的价电子结构进行系统地研究，并以此为基础，对它们的熔点和结合能做进一步分析，分析结果和实验值相符．研究结果表明：稀土金属的结构与晶格电子和共价电子密切相关，随着晶格电子向共价电了的转换，稀土金属的熔点趋于增加．稀土的价态变化也是影响电子分布和性能的主因，如：Sm和Eu的熔点与电子结构的关系不同于其他稀土，外壳层的共价电子之间的转化是其熔点与其他元素之间差别较大的主要原因．稀土的4f电子对结合能的影响大，这是源于其4f电子引发的收缩效应．此结果揭示了决定稀土熔点和结合能的主要因素是稀土的价电子结构的变化．
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