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Osmium (from Ancient Greek ὀσμή (osmḗ) 'smell') is a chemical element; it has symbol Os and atomic number 76. It is a hard, brittle, bluish-white transition metal in the platinum group that is found as a trace element in alloys, mostly in platinum ores. Osmium is the densest naturally occurring element.
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Osmium is a hard but brittle metal that remains lustrous even at high temperatures. It has a very low compressibility. Correspondingly, its bulk modulus is extremely high, reported between 395 and 462 GPa, which rivals that of diamond (443 GPa). The hardness of osmium is moderately high at 4 GPa.
The chemical elements can be broadly divided into metals, metalloids, and nonmetals according to their shared physical and chemical properties.All elemental metals have a shiny appearance (at least when freshly polished); are good conductors of heat and electricity; form alloys with other metallic elements; and have at least one basic oxide.
Generally, the brittle strength of a material can be increased by pressure. This happens as an example in the brittle–ductile transition zone at an approximate depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in the Earth's crust, at which rock becomes less likely to fracture, and more likely to deform ductilely (see rheid).
Most definitions of the term 'refractory metals' list the extraordinarily high melting point as a key requirement for inclusion. By one definition, a melting point above 4,000 °F (2,200 °C) is necessary to qualify, which includes iridium, osmium, niobium, molybdenum, tantalum, tungsten, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium and hafnium. [2]
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Physically, these metals are soft (or brittle), have poor mechanical strength, and usually have melting points lower than those of the transition metals. Being close to the metal-nonmetal border , their crystalline structures tend to show covalent or directional bonding effects, having generally greater complexity or fewer nearest neighbours ...