Densest Chemical Elements

About This Dataset

This chart ranks the ten densest chemical elements by their density at room temperature, measured in grams per cubic centimetre. Osmium and iridium are the two densest naturally occurring elements, both more than twice as dense as lead.

✨ AI Insight

Osmium (22.59 g/cm3) and iridium (22.56 g/cm3) are the densest elements known, so close that historically it was disputed which held the record. Both are more than twice as dense as lead (about 11.3 g/cm3) and cluster tightly with platinum (21.45) and rhenium (21.02) at the top. A recurring theme is that the densest elements are heavy transition metals and actinides packed into compact crystal structures. After rhenium the values step down through neptunium and plutonium into a group near 19 g/cm3 that includes gold, tungsten and uranium, three very different elements with nearly identical density. Tantalum, at 16.69 g/cm3, closes the top ten but is already noticeably lighter than the leaders.

Source: Royal Society of Chemistry

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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Osmium leads with 23 in All Time.

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Average value in All Time: 20 · median: 20.

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Gap in All Time: Osmium is 1.4× larger than Tantalum.