Element 81 · Solid at room temperature
Thallium
Looks like: silvery white.
Thallium is atom number 81 — every Thallium atom has exactly 81 protons in its center, and that number is what makes it Thallium and nothing else. Its symbol is Tl. At room temperature it is a solid.
Thallium is a chemical element with symbol Tl and atomic number 81. This soft gray post-transition metal is not found free in nature. When isolated, it resembles tin, but discolors when exposed to air.
Summary from the source dataset, derived from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) · original article
Thallium sits in period 6, group 13 of the p-block. Its 81 electrons fill shells of 2, 8, 18, 32, 18, 3 — written as [Xe] 4f14 5d10 6s2 6p1. Its electronegativity is 1.62 on the Pauling scale, and pulling the first electron off takes 589.4 kJ/mol. The outermost shell holds 3 electrons — the ones that do all the chemistry.
Full configuration: 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2 3d10 4p6 5s2 4d10 5p6 6s2 4f14 5d10 6p1
Ionization energies (kJ/mol): 589.4, 1971, 2878
Electron affinity: 36.4 kJ/mol · Electronegativity (Pauling):
1.62
Density: 11.85
g/cm³ · melts 577 K · boils 1746 K
Values exactly as published — see where the data comes from.
Atomic mass
204.38u
Density
11.85g/cm³
Melts
577 K
Boils
1746 K
The units on this page — explained by Unitii
Thallium's family
Elements in the same column share their outer-electron count, so they behave alike.
Source
Discovered by William Crookes.
Periodic-Table-JSON (Bowserinator and contributors); element summaries derived from Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 · snapshot retrieved 2026-08-21