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Science Trivia Questions and Answers in Five Rounds

Five rounds of 30, from the joule to the Leyden jar, with ten easy questions in each.

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Physics 30

  • A thought experiment of 1935 imagines a cat in a sealed box that is both alive and dead until someone looks. Whose cat is it? Answer: Erwin Schrödinger's. Source: Wikipedia: Schrödinger's cat
  • Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize, the physics prize for 1921, singled out his explanation of which effect? Answer: The photoelectric effect. Source: Wikipedia: Photoelectric effect
  • An ambulance siren sounds higher as it comes toward you and lower as it drives away. What is this effect called? Answer: The Doppler effect. Source: Wikipedia: Doppler effect
  • At a substance's triple point, what is true? Answer: Its solid, liquid and gas forms exist together in balance. Source: Wikipedia: Triple point
  • Heat that moves through a liquid or gas by currents of rising warm fluid is traveling by which process? Answer: Convection. Source: Wikipedia: Convection
  • How many quarks make up a proton? Answer: Three. Source: Wikipedia: Proton
  • In 1995 Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman cooled a gas of rubidium atoms to within a whisker of absolute zero and made the first example of what? Answer: A Bose-Einstein condensate. Source: Wikipedia: Bose–Einstein condensate
  • In electricity, what does AC stand for? Answer: Alternating current. Source: Wikipedia: Alternating current
  • In Paris in 1851, Léon Foucault hung a long pendulum to demonstrate what? Answer: That the Earth rotates. Source: Wikipedia: Foucault pendulum
  • Mach 1 is the speed of what? Answer: Sound. Source: Wikipedia: Mach number
  • The name of the neutrino is Italian. What does it mean? Answer: Little neutral one. Source: Wikipedia: Neutrino
  • Roughly how fast must a rocket go to escape Earth's gravity from the surface, ignoring air resistance? Answer: About 11 kilometers per second. Source: Wikipedia: Escape velocity
  • What is a single particle, or quantum, of light called? Answer: A photon. Source: Wikipedia: Photon
  • What is the blue glow seen in the water around a nuclear reactor core called? Answer: Cherenkov radiation. Source: Wikipedia: Cherenkov radiation
  • What is the SI unit of electric current? Answer: The ampere. Source: Wikipedia: Ampere
  • What is the SI unit of energy? Answer: The joule. Source: Wikipedia: Joule
  • What name is given to a material that loses all electrical resistance when cooled below a critical temperature? Answer: A superconductor. Source: Wikipedia: Superconductivity
  • Where was the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction set going, on December 2, 1942? Answer: Under the stands of a football field at the University of Chicago. Source: Wikipedia: Chicago Pile-1
  • Which 1887 experiment in Ohio failed to find any sign of the ether that light was thought to travel through? Answer: The Michelson-Morley experiment. Source: Wikipedia: Michelson–Morley experiment
  • Which device raises or lowers the voltage of an alternating current? Answer: A transformer. Source: Wikipedia: Transformer
  • Which German physicist set out the uncertainty principle in 1927? Answer: Werner Heisenberg. Source: Wikipedia: Uncertainty principle
  • Which kind of electromagnetic wave has the longest wavelength? Answer: Radio waves. Source: Wikipedia: Electromagnetic spectrum
  • Which kind of lens is thicker in the middle than at the edges and brings light to a focus? Answer: A convex lens. Source: Wikipedia: Lens
  • Which machine turns mechanical energy into electrical energy? Answer: A generator. Source: Wikipedia: Electric generator
  • Which of the four fundamental forces of nature is by far the weakest? Answer: Gravity. Source: Wikipedia: Fundamental interaction
  • Which scientist concluded from the scattering of alpha particles by gold foil that an atom has a tiny, dense nucleus? Answer: Ernest Rutherford. Source: Wikipedia: Rutherford scattering experiments
  • Which Scottish physicist showed in the 1860s that electricity, magnetism and light are all forms of one thing? Answer: James Clerk Maxwell. Source: Wikipedia: James Clerk Maxwell
  • Who discovered the neutron in 1932? Answer: James Chadwick. Source: Wikipedia: James Chadwick
  • Who opened the way to quantum theory in 1900 by proposing that energy is given out in separate packets? Answer: Max Planck. Source: Wikipedia: Max Planck
  • The word laser began as an acronym: light amplification by stimulated emission of what? Answer: Radiation. Source: Wikipedia: Laser

Chemistry 30

  • Aqua regia, one of the few liquids that dissolves gold, is a mixture of nitric acid and which other acid? Answer: Hydrochloric acid. Source: Wikipedia: Aqua regia
  • Ascorbic acid is better known as which vitamin? Answer: Vitamin C. Source: Wikipedia: Vitamin C
  • Brass is copper alloyed with which other metal? Answer: Zinc. Source: Wikipedia: Brass
  • The German chemist Martin Klaproth discovered which element in 1789 and named it after a newly found planet? Answer: Uranium. Source: Wikipedia: Uranium
  • The Haber process joins nitrogen from the air with hydrogen to make which compound, the basis of most fertilizer? Answer: Ammonia. Source: Wikipedia: Haber process
  • In 1807 Humphry Davy used electricity from a battery to isolate which two metals for the first time? Answer: Potassium and sodium. Source: Wikipedia: Humphry Davy
  • Mercury is one of two elements that are liquid at room temperature. Which is the other? Answer: Bromine. Source: Wikipedia: Bromine
  • The name of which noble gas comes from the Greek word for stranger? Answer: Xenon. Source: Wikipedia: Xenon
  • The number of particles in one mole of a substance is named after which Italian scientist? Answer: Amedeo Avogadro. Source: Wikipedia: Avogadro constant
  • Organic chemistry studies compounds built around which element? Answer: Carbon. Source: Wikipedia: Organic chemistry
  • Radiocarbon dating measures how much of which isotope is left in something that was once alive? Answer: Carbon-14. Source: Wikipedia: Radiocarbon dating
  • What color does blue litmus paper turn in an acid? Answer: Red. Source: Wikipedia: Litmus
  • What do chemists call a reaction that gives out heat? Answer: Exothermic. Source: Wikipedia: Exothermic reaction
  • What is the chemical name for laughing gas? Answer: Nitrous oxide. Source: Wikipedia: Nitrous oxide
  • What is the chemical name for ordinary table sugar? Answer: Sucrose. Source: Wikipedia: Sucrose
  • What is the everyday name for sodium bicarbonate? Answer: Baking soda. Source: Wikipedia: Sodium bicarbonate
  • Which acid gives lemons and limes their sharp taste? Answer: Citric acid. Source: Wikipedia: Citric acid
  • Which acid is used in the lead-acid batteries that start most cars? Answer: Sulfuric acid. Source: Wikipedia: Lead–acid battery
  • Which Danish chemist introduced the pH scale in 1909? Answer: Søren Sørensen. Source: Wikipedia: PH
  • Which element is the rarest to occur naturally in the crust of the Earth? Answer: Astatine. Source: Wikipedia: Astatine
  • Which element, number 43, was the first to be made artificially? Answer: Technetium. Source: Wikipedia: Technetium
  • Which flammable gas filled the German airship Hindenburg, which burned in New Jersey in 1937? Answer: Hydrogen. Source: Wikipedia: Hindenburg disaster
  • Which French chemist named oxygen in 1778 and was sent to the guillotine in 1794? Answer: Antoine Lavoisier. Source: Wikipedia: Antoine Lavoisier
  • Which gas is the main ingredient of natural gas? Answer: Methane. Source: Wikipedia: Natural gas
  • Which metal makes stainless steel stainless? Answer: Chromium. Source: Wikipedia: Stainless steel
  • Which metal melts at the highest temperature of all? Answer: Tungsten. Source: Wikipedia: Tungsten
  • Which radioactive element did Marie and Pierre Curie discover in 1898 and name after Marie's homeland? Answer: Polonium. Source: Wikipedia: Polonium
  • Which radioactive noble gas can seep from the ground and collect in basements? Answer: Radon. Source: Wikipedia: Radon
  • Who is the only person to have won two Nobel Prizes without sharing either of them? Answer: Linus Pauling. Source: Wikipedia: Linus Pauling
  • Yttrium, terbium, erbium and ytterbium are all named after Ytterby, a village in which country? Answer: Sweden. Source: Wikipedia: Ytterby

Life science 30

  • A Great Basin bristlecone pine in California, more than 4,800 years old, is named after which long-lived figure from the Bible? Answer: Methuselah. Source: Wikipedia: Methuselah (pine tree)
  • A mushroom is the fruiting body of which kind of living thing? Answer: A fungus. Source: Wikipedia: Mushroom
  • A single honey fungus in the Malheur National Forest of Oregon may be the largest living thing on Earth. Roughly how much ground does it cover? Answer: About 9 square kilometers. Source: Wikipedia: Armillaria ostoyae
  • An isolated population of woolly mammoths lived on until about 4,000 years ago on which island? Answer: Wrangel Island. Source: Wikipedia: Woolly mammoth
  • At which site in Los Angeles have the bones of mammoths, dire wolves and saber-toothed cats been dug out of natural asphalt? Answer: The La Brea Tar Pits. Source: Wikipedia: La Brea Tar Pits
  • Cane toads were brought to Australia in 1935 to do what? Answer: Eat beetles that attacked sugar cane. Source: Wikipedia: Cane toads in Australia
  • Caterpillars of the monarch butterfly feed only on which plants? Answer: Milkweeds. Source: Wikipedia: Monarch butterfly
  • The kakapo of New Zealand is a rare bird that is active at night and cannot fly. What kind of bird is it? Answer: A parrot. Source: Wikipedia: Kākāpō
  • The last known thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, died in 1936 in a zoo in which city? Answer: Hobart. Source: Wikipedia: Thylacine
  • Lemurs live wild on only one large island. Which one? Answer: Madagascar. Source: Wikipedia: Lemur
  • The okapi lives wild only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has striped markings like a zebra. Which animal is it most closely related to? Answer: The giraffe. Source: Wikipedia: Okapi
  • Orangutans live wild on only two islands. Which two? Answer: Borneo and Sumatra. Source: Wikipedia: Orangutan
  • Periodical cicadas of eastern North America spend most of their lives underground. After how many years do they come out? Answer: 13 or 17. Source: Wikipedia: Periodical cicadas
  • Pterosaurs were the first animals with a backbone to do what? Answer: Fly under their own power. Source: Wikipedia: Pterosaur
  • Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring warned about the harm done to wildlife by which kind of chemical? Answer: Pesticides such as DDT. Source: Wikipedia: Silent Spring
  • Smilodon, a heavily built hunter that lived in the Americas until the end of the last ice age, is the best known of which prehistoric animals? Answer: Saber-toothed cats. Source: Wikipedia: Smilodon
  • Steller's sea cow was hunted to extinction within 27 years of Europeans finding it in 1741. Which animal is the only living member of its family? Answer: The dugong. Source: Wikipedia: Steller's sea cow
  • The tuatara is the last survivor of an order of reptiles that flourished in the age of the dinosaurs. In which country does it live? Answer: New Zealand. Source: Wikipedia: Tuatara
  • What color is the blood of an octopus? Answer: Blue. Source: Wikipedia: Octopus
  • What is the science of dating wood and past events by counting tree rings called? Answer: Dendrochronology. Source: Wikipedia: Dendrochronology
  • What is the scientific study of birds called? Answer: Ornithology. Source: Wikipedia: Ornithology
  • What is unusual about the Portuguese man o' war? Answer: It is a colony of many small animals and not one jellyfish. Source: Wikipedia: Portuguese man o' war
  • Which animals did Dian Fossey study for nearly twenty years in the mountain forests of Rwanda? Answer: Mountain gorillas. Source: Wikipedia: Dian Fossey
  • Which Austrian zoologist became famous for his studies of imprinting, in which newly hatched geese bond with the first moving thing they see? Answer: Konrad Lorenz. Source: Wikipedia: Konrad Lorenz
  • Which extinct flightless seabird of the North Atlantic was called the penguin long before the birds that carry the name today? Answer: The great auk. Source: Wikipedia: Great auk
  • Which fish, known only from fossils and thought to have died out with the dinosaurs, was caught alive off South Africa in 1938? Answer: The coelacanth. Source: Wikipedia: Coelacanth
  • Which naturalist and painter published The Birds of America, with its life-size plates, between 1827 and 1838? Answer: John James Audubon. Source: Wikipedia: The Birds of America
  • Which pale insects live in large colonies, eat wood and build tall mounds in warm countries? Answer: Termites. Source: Wikipedia: Termite
  • Which parasitic plant of the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo produces the largest single flower in the world? Answer: Rafflesia arnoldii. Source: Wikipedia: Rafflesia arnoldii
  • Why are most poison dart frogs so brightly colored? Answer: To warn predators that they are toxic. Source: Wikipedia: Poison dart frog

Earth and space 30

  • A parsec is a unit of distance used by astronomers. About how many light-years is it? Answer: 3.26. Source: Wikipedia: Parsec
  • About how old is the Earth? Answer: About 4.5 billion years. Source: Wikipedia: Age of Earth
  • About how old is the universe, according to current measurements? Answer: About 13.8 billion years. Source: Wikipedia: Age of the universe
  • The Chicxulub crater, left by the asteroid linked to the end of the dinosaurs, lies under which peninsula? Answer: The Yucatán Peninsula. Source: Wikipedia: Chicxulub crater
  • The eruption of which Indonesian volcano in April 1815 led to the year without a summer in 1816? Answer: Mount Tambora. Source: Wikipedia: 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora
  • Geothermal power stations turn which source of energy into electricity? Answer: Heat from inside the Earth. Source: Wikipedia: Geothermal energy
  • In which epoch of geological time, which began about 11,700 years ago, are we living? Answer: The Holocene. Source: Wikipedia: Holocene
  • Pluto travels in which belt of small icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune? Answer: The Kuiper belt. Source: Wikipedia: Kuiper belt
  • The strongest earthquake ever recorded struck which country on May 22, 1960? Answer: Chile. Source: Wikipedia: 1960 Valdivia earthquake
  • What are the narrow bands of fast wind high in the atmosphere, which airliners ride to save fuel, called? Answer: Jet streams. Source: Wikipedia: Jet stream
  • What are the stone icicles that hang from the roof of a cave called? Answer: Stalactites. Source: Wikipedia: Stalactite
  • What do astronomers call the share of sunlight that a planet or moon reflects back into space? Answer: Albedo. Source: Wikipedia: Albedo
  • What does a meteorologist study? Answer: Weather and the atmosphere. Source: Wikipedia: Meteorology
  • What is a ring-shaped coral island around a lagoon called? Answer: An atoll. Source: Wikipedia: Atoll
  • What is the name of the supermassive black hole in the middle of the Milky Way? Answer: Sagittarius A*. Source: Wikipedia: Sagittarius A*
  • What is the outer atmosphere of the Sun, visible as a pale halo during a total solar eclipse, called? Answer: The corona. Source: Wikipedia: Sun
  • What is the scientific study of past life, mainly through fossils, called? Answer: Paleontology. Source: Wikipedia: Paleontology
  • What is the vast canyon system on Mars, more than 4,000 kilometers long, called? Answer: Valles Marineris. Source: Wikipedia: Valles Marineris
  • What name is given to the warming of the surface of the eastern tropical Pacific that upsets weather around the world every few years? Answer: El Niño. Source: Wikipedia: El Niño–Southern Oscillation
  • What was the first space station, launched by the Soviet Union in April 1971? Answer: Salyut 1. Source: Wikipedia: Salyut 1
  • When the Sun runs out of fuel, billions of years from now, what will be left behind? Answer: A white dwarf. Source: Wikipedia: Sun
  • Which gas makes up more than 96 percent of the atmosphere of Venus? Answer: Carbon dioxide. Source: Wikipedia: Atmosphere of Venus
  • Which German astronomer worked out the three laws of planetary motion, the first of which says that planets move in ellipses? Answer: Johannes Kepler. Source: Wikipedia: Johannes Kepler
  • Which instrument measures the humidity of the air? Answer: A hygrometer. Source: Wikipedia: Hygrometer
  • Which is the only dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter? Answer: Ceres. Source: Wikipedia: Ceres (dwarf planet)
  • Which planet has the fastest winds measured anywhere in the solar system? Answer: Neptune. Source: Wikipedia: Neptune
  • Which seismologist gave his name to the earthquake magnitude scale that he set out in a paper of 1935? Answer: Charles Richter. Source: Wikipedia: Richter scale
  • Which small moon of Saturn shoots jets of water vapor and ice into space from near its south pole? Answer: Enceladus. Source: Wikipedia: Enceladus
  • Which space station has had people living aboard without a break since November 2000? Answer: The International Space Station. Source: Wikipedia: International Space Station
  • Why do we always see the same face of the Moon? Answer: The Moon turns once on its axis in the time it takes to orbit the Earth. Source: Wikipedia: Tidal locking

Inventions and discoveries 30

  • The Bessemer process, patented in 1856, was the first cheap way to make which metal in bulk? Answer: Steel. Source: Wikipedia: Bessemer process
  • Daniel Fahrenheit, who gave his name to a temperature scale, is credited with the first successful version of which instrument? Answer: The mercury thermometer. Source: Wikipedia: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
  • In 1780 Luigi Galvani found that an electric spark made what twitch? Answer: The legs of a dead frog. Source: Wikipedia: Luigi Galvani
  • In 1820 Hans Christian Ørsted found that a nearby electric current made what move? Answer: A compass needle. Source: Wikipedia: Hans Christian Ørsted
  • The Leyden jar of the 1740s was the first device able to do what? Answer: Store a large electric charge. Source: Wikipedia: Leyden jar
  • The spinning jenny of the 1760s sped up the making of what? Answer: Yarn for weaving cloth. Source: Wikipedia: Spinning jenny
  • What could the instrument that the Chinese scholar Zhang Heng presented at court in the year 132 detect? Answer: Which way a distant earthquake lies. Source: Wikipedia: Zhang Heng
  • What did Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann prove had taken place in their Berlin laboratory in December 1938? Answer: Nuclear fission. Source: Wikipedia: Nuclear fission
  • What did Otto von Guericke demonstrate with the Magdeburg hemispheres in 1654? Answer: The pressure of the air. Source: Wikipedia: Magdeburg hemispheres
  • What did the Hungarian-born physicist Dennis Gabor invent in 1947? Answer: Holography. Source: Wikipedia: Dennis Gabor
  • What did the surgeon Joseph Lister bring to operating rooms in the 1860s? Answer: Antiseptics to kill germs. Source: Wikipedia: Joseph Lister
  • What is the shallow lidded dish used to grow bacteria in a laboratory called? Answer: A Petri dish. Source: Wikipedia: Petri dish
  • What legal grant gives an inventor the sole right to make and sell an invention for a limited time? Answer: A patent. Source: Wikipedia: Patent
  • What was first demonstrated in public at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on October 16, 1846? Answer: Surgery under ether anesthesia. Source: Wikipedia: Ether Dome
  • What was the flask that James Dewar invented in 1892 designed to do? Answer: Keep its contents hotter or colder than the surroundings. Source: Wikipedia: Vacuum flask
  • When Anders Celsius set out his temperature scale in 1742, which point did he mark as 0 degrees? Answer: The boiling point of water. Source: Wikipedia: Anders Celsius
  • Which American astronomer showed in the 1920s that the Andromeda nebula lies far outside our own galaxy? Answer: Edwin Hubble. Source: Wikipedia: Edwin Hubble
  • Which Belgian priest and physicist proposed in 1931 that the universe grew from a single primeval atom? Answer: Georges Lemaître. Source: Wikipedia: Georges Lemaître
  • Which computer scientist and US Navy officer held that programs should be written in English words, and in 1959 helped to create the language COBOL? Answer: Grace Hopper. Source: Wikipedia: Grace Hopper
  • Which Cornish engineer built the steam locomotive that made the world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey, in Wales in February 1804? Answer: Richard Trevithick. Source: Wikipedia: Richard Trevithick
  • Which everyday word, at first spelled with a final e, did the Polish biochemist Casimir Funk coin in 1912? Answer: Vitamin. Source: Wikipedia: Casimir Funk
  • Which French physicist discovered radioactivity in 1896 while working with uranium salts? Answer: Henri Becquerel. Source: Wikipedia: Henri Becquerel
  • Which gas burner, found in school laboratories, is named after a German chemist? Answer: The Bunsen burner. Source: Wikipedia: Bunsen burner
  • Which German doctor announced in 1882 that he had found the bacterium that causes tuberculosis? Answer: Robert Koch. Source: Wikipedia: Robert Koch
  • Which inventor, born in 1856 in what is now Croatia, designed an induction motor that runs on alternating current? Answer: Nikola Tesla. Source: Wikipedia: Nikola Tesla
  • Which kind of aircraft is the engineer Igor Sikorsky best known for developing? Answer: The helicopter. Source: Wikipedia: Igor Sikorsky
  • Which kind of telescope did Isaac Newton complete in 1668? Answer: A reflecting telescope, which gathers light with a curved mirror. Source: Wikipedia: Newtonian telescope
  • Which problem of navigation did the English clockmaker John Harrison solve with his sea clocks? Answer: Finding longitude at sea. Source: Wikipedia: John Harrison
  • Which technology finds objects under water by sending out pulses of sound and listening for the echo? Answer: Sonar. Source: Wikipedia: Sonar
  • The Z3, completed in Berlin in 1941, was the first working digital computer in the world that was programmable and fully automatic. Who designed it? Answer: Konrad Zuse. Source: Wikipedia: Z3 (computer)

How it works

Which metal makes stainless steel stainless, and which point did Celsius mark as 0 degrees? These 150 science trivia questions and answers come in five rounds of 30. Answers are marked as you tap.

Read the full guide

Pick a subject for the round

Start from lists five subjects: Physics, Chemistry, Life science, Earth and space and Inventions and discoveries. Choose one and all 30 questions come from it. For a quiz night, read each question and its four choices aloud, let teams write a letter, then tap a choice for the reason. Scores stay on paper.

Warm up on the easy ten

Every subject holds ten easy questions, twelve medium and eight hard, and Level keeps one level at a time. The levels are our estimate. Easy asks for the everyday name of sodium bicarbonate; hard asks where Ytterby is, the village that gave four elements their names. After a set, Print lists the questions you played with lettered choices, and a tick on With answer key adds the reasons.

  • Pair Physics with Inventions and discoveries for a night on electricity: the transformer, Ørsted's compass needle and the Leyden jar all turn up.
  • The reasons are worth reading out. Poison dart frogs owe their poison to a diet of ants, mites and termites.
  • Send a class the same quiz with Share this set: the link keeps the questions and their order.

Questions and answers

Are these trivia questions and answers science only?

Yes: physics, chemistry, life science, Earth and space, and inventions and discoveries. Life science stays with animals, plants, fungi and the naturalists who studied them. The human body has its own anatomy pack, and the biology pack shares no question with this one.

Is this pack right for kids?

It is written for teens and adults. The easy level suits a mixed family table, but hard asks for Cherenkov radiation and the Holocene. Younger players have their own science pack on this site, and none of its questions repeat here.

What does a hard science question look like?

Hard asks what the Italian name neutrino means, or which island held woolly mammoths until about 4,000 years ago. The answers are little neutral one and Wrangel Island. Each round has eight questions at that level.

Have the answers been checked?

Yes. On September 19, 2026 each answer and each added fact was read in the Wikipedia article linked under its question, the only source used. Where the article was vague, the detail came out or the question went. No living scientist is an answer.

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