Element 8 · Gas at room temperature
Oxygen
Oxygen is atom number 8 — every Oxygen atom has exactly 8 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Oxygen and nothing else. Its symbol is O. At room temperature it is a gas.
Oxygen is a chemical element with symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group on the periodic table and is a highly reactive nonmetal and oxidizing agent that readily forms compounds (notably oxides) with most elements. By mass, oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen and helium.
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Oxygen sits in period 2, group 16 of the p-block. Its 8 electrons fill shells of 2, 6 — written as [He] 2s2 2p4. Its electronegativity is 3.44 on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 1313.9 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 6 electrons — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2 2s2 2p4
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 1313.9, 3388.3, 5300.5, 7469.2, 10989.5, 13326.5, 71330, 84078
Electron affinity: 140.976 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
3.44
Density: 1.429
g/L · melts 54.36 K · boils 90.188 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
15.999u
Density
1.429g/L
Melts
54.36 K
Boils
90.188 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Oxygen'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 Oxygen — the upward direction of the map: atom → molecule → stuff you know.
Source
Discovered by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Named by Antoine Lavoisier.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21