6CCarbon12.011

A real sample of the element Carbon — Real sample photo

Carbon (C)

“One element, three personalities: pencil-soft black graphite, hardest-natural diamond and football-shaped fullerenes — every one of them pure carbon.”

View group 14 →View period 2 →See in trends →

Atomic number6

Atomic mass12.011

Group14

Period2

BlockP-block

PhaseSolid

Electron structure

How its electrons are arranged

[He] 2s² 2p²

Shell 1

2e⁻

Shell 2

4e⁻

Computed from the aufbau principle, with known real-world exceptions applied automatically.

🎯 Exam focus

Questions to practise

Try each question yourself first — then open it to read the full model answer.

1Lavoisier burned a diamond in 1772. What did the experiment prove about diamond, charcoal and the element carbon?

Model answerIn 1772 Lavoisier focused a burning lens on a diamond and showed that nothing came off but carbon dioxide. Since burning charcoal gives exactly the same product, the experiment quietly proved that diamond and charcoal are the same element — carbon in two different forms. In 1789 Lavoisier entered carbon in his historic list of the elements.

2Why does the making of every tonne of steel begin with a charge of coke in a blast furnace?

Model answerIron ore is essentially iron in the grip of oxygen, and coke — coal stripped of its impurities — is the champion oxygen-snatcher. In the blast furnace, burning coke grabs the oxygen from the ore and carries it away as gas, leaving molten iron behind. The world’s steel, including every rafter in Dhaka, begins its journey with this charge of coke.

3Point out two carbon items in a Bangladeshi student’s pencil box or kitchen cupboard and name the form of carbon in each.

Model answerIn the pencil box, the “lead” of the pencil is graphite — pure carbon in stacked, slippery sheets (each one-atom-thick sheet is graphene) that rub off onto the page. In the kitchen, the charcoal glowing under a kebab grill, or the soot blackening the bottom of an aluminium degchi, is amorphous carbon — sooty carbon with no crystal order.

4Diamond and graphite are both pure carbon, yet one is the hardest natural material known and the other soft enough to write with. Explain the contrast.

Model answerThe difference is entirely in the arrangement of atoms. In diamond every carbon atom is bonded to four neighbours in a rigid three-dimensional network — the hardest natural material, and an electrical insulator. In graphite the atoms lie in flat sheets, each holding only three neighbours; the sheets themselves are strong, but they slide easily over one another, so graphite is soft enough to rub off on paper yet a good conductor.

5Carbon’s configuration is 1s² 2s² 2p². Show how it hands carbon four valence electrons and a seat in Period 2, Group 14, p-block.

Model answerCarbon’s configuration is 1s² 2s² 2p², and its last electron enters the 2p subshell, making carbon a p-block element; with the outer shell being n = 2 it belongs to Period 2. The outer electrons — 2s² plus 2p² — total four: the four valence electrons that let a carbon atom hold four strong covalent bonds at once. For a p-block element the group is 10 + 4 = 14, exactly where carbon sits.

6The name “carbon” comes from the Latin for charcoal — why does it make sense that this element has no individual discoverer?

Model answerThe name descends from the Latin carbo, “charcoal”. Charcoal, soot and wood smoke were humanity’s companions long before chemistry had a name — every household fire since prehistory made carbon, and Indians were treasuring diamonds by the fourth century BCE. An element present in daily life for countless generations cannot be “discovered” by one person; it was simply known, and Lavoisier later gave it its place in his list.

Study guides

Read about this element

Quick answers

One fact, one page

Every key fact of this element has its own clean page — a direct two-line answer first, then the working. Fast to load, easy to share.

Electron configurationThe full arrangement, step by step ValencyHow many bonds it forms Atomic massThe standard weight, explained Metal or nonmetalWhich family it belongs to Everyday usesWhere you meet it daily

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The notes

About the element

Characteristics

Tetravalent to the bone: four valence electrons let a carbon atom hold four strong covalent bonds at once, so it can build chains, rings and branches — the skeleton of every organic molecule.
Champion of self-bonding (catenation): no other element links into such long, stable chains of itself, which is why millions of carbon compounds are known — more than all other elements combined.
Allotropy at the extremes: diamond, the hardest natural material and an electrical insulator; graphite, soft enough to rub off on paper yet a good conductor; plus fullerenes, nanotubes and one-atom-thin graphene.
The engine of life: proteins, fats, carbohydrates and DNA all stand on carbon backbones, and the slow decay of carbon-14 lets archaeologists read the age of ancient bones and wood.

Appearance

A solid nonmetal of wildly different faces: sparkling, colourless diamond; black, flaky, slippery graphite; sooty charcoal powder; and nanoscale spheres and tubes. It never melts in an ordinary flame — at atmospheric pressure it skips the liquid state altogether and turns straight into vapour above 3,600 °C.

Real world

Where you meet it

✦ Uses

Coke — coal stripped of its impurities — is charged into blast furnaces to snatch oxygen away from iron ore; the world’s steel, including every rafter in Dhaka, begins with coke.
Graphite: the “lead” inside every pencil, the electrodes of arc furnaces and dry cells, and the neutron-slowing moderator at the heart of many nuclear reactors.
Activated carbon — the black granules inside household water purifier cartridges — soaks up chlorine, pesticides and bad odours from drinking water.
Diamond-tipped drill bits, saws and polishing paste for cutting glass, stone and concrete, and carbon-fibre frames for aircraft, racing bikes and badminton rackets that beat steel at a fraction of the weight.

◍ Everyday examples

The pencil in a student’s geometry box writes with stacked sheets of graphene — pure carbon sliding off onto the page.
Sugar, rice, dal, fish and cooking oil are all carbon-based foods; digestion merely reshuffles their carbon skeletons.
The soot blackening the bottom of an aluminium degchi, or the charcoal glowing under a street kebab grill — everyday carbon at work.

Story

History & name

Carbon has no single discoverer — charcoal, soot and wood smoke were humanity’s companions long before chemistry had a name. Indians were treasuring diamonds by the fourth century BCE, and graphite was being used for marking by the 1500s. In 1772 Antoine Lavoisier burned a diamond with a burning lens and showed that nothing came off but carbon dioxide — quietly proving that diamond and charcoal are the same element — and in 1789 he entered carbon in his historic list of the elements. The name comes straight from the Latin carbo, “charcoal”.

Name originLatin carbo, “charcoal” — the element humans have known longest, before they knew what elements were.

Neighbours

Nearby elements

The elements that sit right beside this one on the table — often the closest chemical cousins.

4BeBeryllium9.0122 5BBoron10.81 7NNitrogen14.007 8OOxygen15.999