Element 78 · Solid at room temperature
Platinum
Looks like: silvery white.
Platinum is atom number 78 — every Platinum atom has exactly 78 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Platinum and nothing else. Its symbol is Pt. At room temperature it is a solid.
Platinum is a chemical element with symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, gray-white transition metal. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina, which is literally translated into "little silver".
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Platinum sits in period 6, group 10 of the d-block. Its 78 electrons fill shells of 2, 8, 18, 32, 17, 1 — written as [Xe] 4f14 5d9 6s1. Its electronegativity is 2.28 on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 870 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 1 electron — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2 3d10 4p6 5s2 4d10 5p6 6s1 4f14 5d9
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 870, 1791
Electron affinity: 205.041 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
2.28
Density: 21.45
g/cm³ · melts 2041.4 K · boils 4098 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
195.0849u
Density
21.45g/cm³
Melts
2041.4 K
Boils
4098 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Platinum's family
Elements in the same column share their outer-electron count, so they behave alike.
Source
Discovered by Antonio de Ulloa.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21