Chemical Elements With the Lowest Melting Points

About This Dataset

This chart ranks the chemical elements with the lowest melting points, in degrees Celsius, the ones that stay gaseous or liquid at everyday temperatures. Helium is excluded because it cannot solidify at normal atmospheric pressure.

✨ AI Insight

Hydrogen melts at -259.16 C, the lowest of any element that solidifies at ordinary pressure; helium, which never freezes at one atmosphere, is excluded entirely. The list is dominated by light non-metals and noble gases, hydrogen, neon, fluorine, oxygen, nitrogen and argon all melt below -180 C, which is exactly why they are gases in daily life. The heavier noble gases krypton (-157 C) and xenon (-112 C) melt at higher, though still frigid, temperatures. Two outliers close the ranking: chlorine at -101.5 C and mercury at -38.83 C, the only metal here and famously the only metal that is liquid at room temperature. The roughly 220-degree span from hydrogen to mercury illustrates how weak interatomic forces keep these elements from solidifying.

Source: Melting points of the elements

Key Findings

Auto-computed highlights from this dataset

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Mercury leads with -39 in All Time.