W · Element 74 · Transition metal
The highest melting point of any metal — 3,422 degrees C — and the filament of the incandescent age.
Structure
Not a diagram of dots on rings — a Monte-Carlo sample of the actual probability density |ψ|² for each occupied subshell. Drag to rotate. Blue and violet mark opposite signs of the wavefunction, which is what makes bonding possible.
Measured values
Every bar shows where tungsten sits among all 118 elements for that property.
Sources: IUPAC 2021 standard atomic weights · CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics · NIST. Values marked ~ are predicted rather than measured.
Same element, different neutrons
All tungsten atoms have the same number of protons, 74, and differ only in their number of neutrons: those variants are its isotopes. The most common, W-184, has 110 neutrons and makes up 30.64% of natural tungsten.
| ISOTOPE | Neutrons | Natural Abundance | Half-life | Decay Mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W-180 | 106 | 0.12% | 1.8 × 10¹⁸ yrs | α |
| W-182 | 108 | 26.50% | Stable | — |
| W-183 | 109 | 14.31% | ≥6.7 × 10²⁰ yrs | α |
| W-184 most common | 110 | 30.64% | Stable | — |
| W-186 | 112 | 28.43% | Stable | — |
Here the classroom shortcut, rounded atomic mass (183.84) minus atomic number, gives the same answer: 110.
Decay modes
Data: IAEA Nuclear Data Section, LiveChart of Nuclides, ground-state evaluations, retrieved October 10, 2026. Abundance is the share of atoms in the natural element; a dash means the isotope has no standard natural abundance.
Size, to scale
Radius 139 pm — that is 0.139 nm, so about 3.6 million of them side by side would span a millimetre.
Thermal range
Tungsten is liquid over a 2133 K window, from 3695 K to 5828 K.
The story
Tungsten (W) is element 74, a hard, dense, gray-white transition metal in group 6 of the periodic table. It has the highest melting point of any metal, 3,422 °C (3,695 K), and boils at 5,555 °C (5,828 K). Its density, 19.25 g/cm³, is close to that of gold. The symbol W comes from wolfram, the element's name in German and several other languages.
A tungsten atom has 74 electrons in six shells, arranged 2, 8, 18, 32, 12, 2, with the configuration [Xe] 4f¹⁴ 5d⁴ 6s². Its most common oxidation state is +6, as in tungsten trioxide (WO₃) and the tungstate ion.
Natural tungsten is a mix of five isotopes: tungsten-180, 182, 183, 184 and 186. Tungsten-184 is the most common, at about 31%. Tungsten-180 is weakly radioactive: its alpha decay has been observed, with a half-life of about 1.8 × 10¹⁸ years, so natural tungsten is effectively stable.
In 1781 the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele showed that the mineral then called tungsten (Swedish for "heavy stone", now named scheelite) contained a new acid, which he named tungstic acid. Torbern Bergman suggested that a new metal could be obtained from it, but neither man isolated it.
In 1783 the Spanish brothers Juan José and Fausto Elhuyar, working at the Royal Seminary of Bergara in the Basque Country, found the same acid in the mineral wolframite and reduced it with charcoal, obtaining the metal for the first time. This is the discovery year shown on this page.
The Elhuyar brothers called the metal wolfram, after wolframite, and that name is still used in German and several other languages. English and French adopted tungsten. IUPAC uses the name tungsten with the symbol W, from wolfram.
Tungsten is brittle at room temperature, so the first tungsten lamp filaments were pressed from powder and fragile. Between 1906 and 1910 William Coolidge at General Electric developed a powder metallurgy process to make ductile tungsten wire, which became the standard filament of incandescent lamps.
Applications
The largest use of tungsten is tungsten carbide (WC), a very hard ceramic. Grains of the carbide bonded with cobalt form cemented carbide, used for cutting tools, drill bits, mining and tunneling tools, and wear parts. The USGS estimates that cemented carbides account for about 60% of the tungsten consumed in the United States.
Where it comes from
1.3 mg/kg of Earth's crust · more abundant than 53% of elements
Tungsten is scarce in Earth's crust, at about 1.3 parts per million, and it never occurs as a free metal. Its deposits formed in hydrothermal veins and skarns around granite intrusions, where hot fluids carrying tungsten deposited minerals as they cooled.
According to the USGS, China mines about four-fifths of the world's tungsten. Other producers include Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Russia, Bolivia and Rwanda, and recycled scrap supplies a large share of the metal. Because supply is so concentrated, the United States and the European Union both list tungsten as a critical raw material.
Handling
Solid tungsten metal is of low toxicity and is not a hazard in normal handling. The main risk is dust. Breathing fine dust from grinding cemented tungsten carbide can cause hard metal lung disease, a scarring of the lungs linked mainly to the cobalt binder. Some soluble tungsten compounds are toxic, and tungsten hexafluoride (WF₆), used in chip making, is a corrosive gas that releases hydrogen fluoride on contact with moisture.
Fine tungsten powder can burn or explode if it is dispersed in air near an ignition source. Fires involving metal powders are fought with a Class D extinguisher or dry sand, not water.
Quick answers
Tungsten (symbol W) is element 74 on the periodic table, a transition metal in period 6, group 6. The highest melting point of any metal — 3,422 degrees C — and the filament of the incandescent age. At room temperature it is a solid.
[Xe] 4f¹⁴ 5d⁴ 6s², giving 6 occupied shells with the distribution 2, 8, 18, 32, 12, 2.Tungsten melts at 3695 K (3421.9 °C) and boils at 5828 K (5554.9 °C). That puts it among the most refractory elements — it stays solid at temperatures that vaporise most metals.
The standard atomic weight of tungsten is 183.84 u. That is a weighted average across its naturally occurring isotopes, which is why it is rarely a whole number.
The most common tungsten atom, W-184, has 110 neutrons: its mass number, 184, minus its atomic number, 74. It makes up 30.64% of natural tungsten. The classroom shortcut, rounded atomic mass (183.84) minus atomic number, gives the same 110.
Tungsten has a density of 19.25 g/cm³. Water is 1.0 g/cm³, so a block of tungsten is about 19.3× heavier.
Tungsten has a Pauling electronegativity of 2.36. The scale runs from 0.70 (francium, the least greedy for electrons) to 3.98 (fluorine, the most). Values in this middle band tend to form covalent rather than strongly ionic bonds.
Tungsten was discovered in 1783 by Juan Jose & Fausto Elhuyar. Origin of the name: Swedish tung sten, "heavy stone".
Tungsten makes up about 1.3 mg/kg of the Earth's crust — uncommon, but not rare.