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
Symbol (chemistry) Symbol (chemistry) In relation to the chemical elements, a symbol is a code for a chemical element. Many functional groups have their own chemical symbol, e.g. Ph for the phenyl group, and Me for the methyl group. Chemical symbols for elements normally consist of one or two letters from the Latin alphabet, but can contain three when the element has a systematic temporary name (as of March 2017, no discovered elements have such a name), and are written with the first letter capitalized. Earlier chemical element symbols stem from classical Latin and Greek vocabulary. For some elements, this is because