What is the least expensive element? (2024)

FAQs

What is the least expensive element? ›

Chlorine, sulfur and carbon (as coal) are cheapest by mass. Hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and chlorine are cheapest by volume at atmospheric pressure.

Scientific element: Francium

The most expensive and second rarest natural element.

Astatine is a chemical element; it has symbol At and atomic number 85. It is the rarest naturally occurring element in the Earth's crust, occurring only as the decay product of various heavier elements.

That is,. hundreds of thousands of dollars per kilogram – and ten(or more) times more expensive than gold. Making a nuclear bomb requires at least four kilograms of plutonium, the raw materials for such weapons cost over a million dollars.

The least expensive elements are Carbon, Sulphur, and Chlorine which are cheap by their mass. Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Chlorine are the least expensive elements by their volume in the atmospheric pressure.

Since the energy per fission from plutonium-239 and uranium-235 is about the same, the theoretical fuel value of fissile plutonium can be put at $5,600 per kilogram. Reactor-grade plutonium also contains non-fissile isotopes, reducing its value to about $4,400 per kilogram.

Rare earth elements are a group of 16 elements in the periodic table, namely the lanthanides (atomic number 57 to 71) plus yttrium (Figure 2). These elements are divided into LREE (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm) and HREE (Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu, Y) based on a comparison of their atomic radius and charge.

Although neon is the forth most abundant element in the universe, only 0.0018% in volume of the earth's atmosphere is neon. Neon is usually found in the form of a gas with molecules consisting of a single Neon atom.

Polonium is a highly radioactive heavy metal. It is arguably the most lethal known material. Although it has some minor industrial uses it is best known for links with possible assassinations. It is also used to produce neutrons in the core of nuclear weapons.

How expensive is antimatter? ›

In the realm of valuable materials, antimatter stands as a unique and astronomical outlier. Priced at a staggering $62.5 trillion per gram, its value not only surpasses that of rare minerals like diamonds or gold but also dwarfs the entire global economy, estimated at around $100 trillion.

Typically in a modern weapon, the weapon's pit contains 3.5 to 4.5 kilograms (7.7 to 9.9 lb) of plutonium and at detonation produces approximately 5 to 10 kilotonnes of TNT (21 to 42 TJ) yield, representing the fissioning of approximately 0.5 kilograms (1.1 lb) of plutonium.

International Space Station. Guinness World Records says that the most expensive thing ever created was the International Space Station, which reportedly cost USD 150 billion to design and build.

As of 2020, the most expensive non-synthetic element by both mass and volume is rhodium. It is followed by caesium, iridium and palladium by mass and iridium, gold and platinum by volume. Carbon in the form of diamond can be more expensive than rhodium.

Palladium is currently the most expensive of the four major precious metals - gold, silver, platinum and palladium. It is scarcer than platinum, and is being used in great quantities for catalytic converters in cars. Because of this, prices have swung between the two metals.

Element 118 is Oganesson, which is a synthetic, radioactive element with a very short half-life. Due to its unstable nature, it is not available in macroscopic quantities and therefore, there is no market price for it.

Today, it's the most valuable precious metal on the planet: rhodium, a chemical element with the symbol Rh and atomic number 45.