OPOpenPithMake curiosity visibleCHEMISTRY LAB / 02

The Periodic Table

118 elements, raised by their properties.

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About Phosphorus

Phosphorus is a chemical element; it has symbol P and atomic number 15. All elemental forms of phosphorus are highly reactive and are therefore never found in nature. Elemental phosphorus can be prepared artificially, the two most common allotropes being white phosphorus and red phosphorus. With 31P as its only stable isotope, phosphorus has an occurrence in Earth's crust of about 0.1%, generally as phosphate rock. A member of the pnictogen family, phosphorus readily forms a wide variety of organic and inorganic compounds, with as its main oxidation states +5, +3 and −3.

The isolation of white phosphorus in 1669 by Hennig Brand marked the scientific community's first discovery of an element since antiquity.

The text above is from the lead of the Wikipedia article “Phosphorus” (retrieved 2026-11-05), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Data and notes

Column height is a linear display mapping; the shortest column is not zero. Data: PubChem, IAEA.

Solid columns are measured, frosted glass is predicted, empty frames have no value.

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