chemicalelements.info

Tungsten

74
W
Tungsten
183.84

Properties

Symbol:W
Atomic Number:74
Atomic Weight:183.84
Density:19.3 g/cm3
Melting Point:
3695K
3422°C
6191°F
Boiling Point:
5828K
5555°C
10031°F

Electron Shells

2, 8, 18, 32, 12, 2

Tungsten (W) is a metallic chemical element with atomic number 74. Its symbol W comes from its alternative name, wolfram. Tungsten is the Swedish word for "heavy rock", but in the Swedish language the element itself is actually not called tungsten, it is called volfram.

Tungsten has the highest melting point of all elements, except for carbon which never melts under normal pressure.

The primary use of tungsten is tungsten carbide, which is a material used in lots of heavy industrial tools.

An interesting property of tungsten is that, despite being significantly cheaper, its density is almost identical to that of gold. Therefore it is sometimes used to try to counterfeit gold bars, by plating only a thin layer of gold onto a tungsten bar!