Element 20 · Solid at room temperature
Calcium
Calcium is atom number 20 — every Calcium atom has exactly 20 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Calcium and nothing else. Its symbol is Ca. At room temperature it is a solid.
Calcium is a chemical element with symbol Ca and atomic number 20. Calcium is a soft gray alkaline earth metal, fifth-most-abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust. The ion Ca2+ is also the fifth-most-abundant dissolved ion in seawater by both molarity and mass, after sodium, chloride, magnesium, and sulfate.
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Calcium sits in period 4, group 2 of the s-block. Its 20 electrons fill shells of 2, 8, 8, 2 — written as [Ar] 4s2. Its electronegativity is 1 on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 589.8 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 2 electrons — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 589.8, 1145.4, 4912.4, 6491, 8153, 10496, 12270, 14206 … (20 published)
Electron affinity: 2.37 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
1
Density: 1.55
g/cm³ · melts 1115 K · boils 1757 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
40.0784u
Density
1.55g/cm³
Melts
1115 K
Boils
1757 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Calcium's family
Elements in the same column share their outer-electron count, so they behave alike.
What it becomes
Everyday compounds in our curated set that contain Calcium — the upward direction of the map: atom → molecule → stuff you know.
Source
Discovered by Humphry Davy.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21