oxygen group element, also called 

chalcogen, any of the six chemical elements

making up Group 16 (VIa) of the periodic classification—
namely, oxygen (O), sulfur (S), selenium (Se), tellurium (Te), polonium (Po),
and livermorium (Lv). A relationship between the first three members of the group was
recognized as early as 1829; tellurium was assigned its place by 1865, and polonium was
discovered in 1898. In 2000, Russian and American physicists created livermorium, the
sixth member of Group 16, in a particle accelerator.
Natural occurrence and uses
Estimates of the proportions of the various kinds of atoms in the universe put oxygen
fourth in abundance, after hydrogen, helium, and neon, but the importance of such a
ranking is slight, since hydrogen atoms account for almost 94 percent of the total and
helium for most of the rest. About three atoms out of 10,000 are oxygen, but because the
mass of an oxygen atom is approximately 16 times that of a hydrogen atom,
oxygen constitutes a larger fraction of the mass of the universe, though still only about
0.5 percent. In the regions ordinarily accessible to man, however—i.e., within a few
kilometres of the surface of the Earth—oxygen is the most abundant element: in mass, it
makes up about 20 percent of the air, about 46 percent of the solid crust of the Earth,
and about 89 percent of the water.

Oxygen is represented by the chemical symbol O. In the air, oxygen exists mostly as

molecules each made up of two atoms (O2), although small amounts of ozone (O3), in
which three atoms of oxygen make up each molecule, are present in the atmosphere.
Oxygen is a colourless, odourless, tasteless gas essential to living organisms, being taken
up by animals, which convert it to carbon dioxide; plants, in turn, utilize carbon
dioxide as a source of carbon and return the oxygen to the atmosphere. Oxygen
forms compounds by reaction with practically any other element, as well as by reactions
that displace elements from their combinations with each other; in many cases, these
processes are accompanied by the evolution of heat and light and in such cases are
called combustions.