Element 7 · Gas at room temperature
Nitrogen
Looks like: colorless gas, liquid or solid.
Nitrogen is atom number 7 — every Nitrogen atom has exactly 7 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Nitrogen and nothing else. Its symbol is N. At room temperature it is a gas.
Nitrogen is a chemical element with symbol N and atomic number 7. It is the lightest pnictogen and at room temperature, it is a transparent, odorless diatomic gas. Nitrogen is a common element in the universe, estimated at about seventh in total abundance in the Milky Way and the Solar System.
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Nitrogen sits in period 2, group 15 of the p-block. Its 7 electrons fill shells of 2, 5 — written as [He] 2s2 2p3. Its electronegativity is 3.04 on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 1402.3 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 5 electrons — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2 2s2 2p3
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 1402.3, 2856, 4578.1, 7475, 9444.9, 53266.6, 64360
Electron affinity: -6.8 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
3.04
Density: 1.251
g/L · melts 63.15 K · boils 77.355 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
14.007u
Density
1.251g/L
Melts
63.15 K
Boils
77.355 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Nitrogen'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 Nitrogen — the upward direction of the map: atom → molecule → stuff you know.
Source
Discovered by Daniel Rutherford. Named by Jean-Antoine Chaptal.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21