Element 32 · Solid at room temperature
Germanium
Looks like: grayish-white.
Germanium is atom number 32 — every Germanium atom has exactly 32 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Germanium and nothing else. Its symbol is Ge. At room temperature it is a solid.
Germanium is a chemical element with symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is a lustrous, hard, grayish-white metalloid in the carbon group, chemically similar to its group neighbors tin and silicon. Purified germanium is a semiconductor, with an appearance most similar to elemental silicon.
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Germanium sits in period 4, group 14 of the p-block. Its 32 electrons fill shells of 2, 8, 18, 4 — written as [Ar] 3d10 4s2 4p2. Its electronegativity is 2.01 on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 762 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 4 electrons — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2 3d10 4p2
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 762, 1537.5, 3302.1, 4411, 9020
Electron affinity: 118.9352 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
2.01
Density: 5.323
g/cm³ · melts 1211.4 K · boils 3106 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
72.6308u
Density
5.323g/cm³
Melts
1211.4 K
Boils
3106 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Germanium's family
Elements in the same column share their outer-electron count, so they behave alike.
Source
Discovered by Clemens Winkler.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21