Element 16 · Solid at room temperature
Sulfur
Looks like: lemon yellow sintered microcrystals.
Sulfur is atom number 16 — every Sulfur atom has exactly 16 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Sulfur and nothing else. Its symbol is S. At room temperature it is a solid.
Sulfur or sulphur (see spelling differences) is a chemical element with symbol S and atomic number 16. It is an abundant, multivalent non-metal. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with chemical formula S8.
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Sulfur sits in period 3, group 16 of the p-block. Its 16 electrons fill shells of 2, 8, 6 — written as [Ne] 3s2 3p4. Its electronegativity is 2.58 on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 999.6 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 6 electrons — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p4
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 999.6, 2252, 3357, 4556, 7004.3, 8495.8, 27107, 31719 … (16 published)
Electron affinity: 200.4101 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
2.58
Density: 2.07
g/cm³ · melts 388.36 K · boils 717.8 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
32.06u
Density
2.07g/cm³
Melts
388.36 K
Boils
717.8 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Sulfur'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 Sulfur — the upward direction of the map: atom → molecule → stuff you know.
Source
Discovered by Ancient china.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21