Highest melting point of any element

Of all the metallic chemical elements, tungsten (symbol W, atomic number 74) has the highest melting point at 3,422°C (6192°F; 3,695°K). This extremely high melting point (along with its high density and hardness) makes tungsten a useful metal for demanding industrial applications such as drill-bits, arc-welding electrodes and furnaces. It also has many military applications, primarily in making armour-piercing bullets and shells. It was once commonly used to make incandescent lightbulbs, but tungsten-filament designs are now being phased out in favour of more energy-efficient LED and fluorescent designs.

There are some allotropes of carbon (a non-metallic element) with higher melting points – the graphite form of carbon sublimes directly to vapour at 3,825°C (6,917°F; 4,098°K) and can be obtained as a liquid only by heating it to a temperature of around 4,526°C (4,800 K; 8,180°F) under a pressure of 10MPa (100 atmospheres).