Element 26 · Solid at room temperature
Iron
Looks like: lustrous metallic with a grayish tinge.
Iron is atom number 26 — every Iron atom has exactly 26 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Iron and nothing else. Its symbol is Fe. At room temperature it is a solid.
Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from Latin:ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core.
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Iron sits in period 4, group 8 of the d-block. Its 26 electrons fill shells of 2, 8, 14, 2 — written as [Ar] 3d6 4s2. Its electronegativity is 1.83 on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 762.5 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 2 electrons — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2 3d6
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 762.5, 1561.9, 2957, 5290, 7240, 9560, 12060, 14580 … (26 published)
Electron affinity: 14.785 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
1.83
Density: 7.874
g/cm³ · melts 1811 K · boils 3134 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
55.8452u
Density
7.874g/cm³
Melts
1811 K
Boils
3134 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Iron'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 Iron — the upward direction of the map: atom → molecule → stuff you know.
Source
Discovered by 5000 BC.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21