Platinum
chemical element with symbol Pt and atomic number 78
Platinum is a chemical element; it has symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish platina, a diminutive of plata "silver".
Platinum is a member of the platinum group of elements and group 10 of the periodic table of elements. It has six naturally occurring isotopes. It is one of the rarer elements in Earth's crust, with an average abundance of approximately 5 μg/kg. It occurs in some nickel and copper ores along with some native deposits. Because of its scarcity in Earth's crust, barely a few hundred metric tonnes are produced annually, and given its critical and important uses, it is highly valuable as well as a major precious metal commodity.
Platinum does not corrode, even at high temperatures, and is therefore considered a noble metal. Consequently, platinum is often found chemically uncombined as native platinum.
“Platinum” enters the record as chemical element with symbol Pt and atomic number 78. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Platinum, chemical and element can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q880. The Library of Congress control number is sh85103305. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Platinum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.