Carbon Carbon Carbon (from "coal") is a chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Three isotopes occur naturally, C and C being stable, while C is a radionuclide, decaying with a half-life of about 5,730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity. Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon's abundance, its unique
Period 6 element niobium, occurs in the minerals tantalite, columbite and coltan (a mix of columbite and tantalite). Tungsten, also known as wolfram, is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74. The word "tungsten" comes from the Swedish language "tung sten" directly translatable to "heavy stone", though the name is "volfram" in Swedish to distinguish it from Scheelite, in Swedish alternatively named "tungsten". A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as a metal in