Element 2 · Gas at room temperature
Helium
Looks like: colorless gas, exhibiting a red-orange glow when placed in a high-voltage electric field.
Helium is atom number 2 — every Helium atom has exactly 2 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Helium and nothing else. Its symbol is He. At room temperature it is a gas.
Helium is a chemical element with symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling and melting points are the lowest among all the elements.
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Helium sits in period 1, group 18 of the s-block. Its 2 electrons fill shells of 2 — written as 1s2. Its electronegativity is — on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 2372.3 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 2 electrons — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 2372.3, 5250.5
Electron affinity: -48 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
—
Density: 0.1786
g/L · melts 0.95 K · boils 4.222 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
4.0026022u
Density
0.1786g/L
Melts
0.95 K
Boils
4.222 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Helium's family
Elements in the same column share their outer-electron count, so they behave alike.
Source
Discovered by Pierre Janssen.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21