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 price of approximately US$4,575 per kilogram (US$142.30 per troy ounce) as of August 2011; it is also of critical strategic military importance, for its use in high performance military jet and rocket engines. Osmium is a chemical element with the symbol Os and atomic number 76. It is a hard, brittle, blue-gray or blue-black transition metal in the platinum family and is the densest naturally occurring element, with a density of (slightly greater than that of iridium and twice that of lead). It is found in nature as an alloy, mostly in platinum ores; its alloys with platinum, iridium, and