These water trivia questions and answers run in four rounds: the molecule and its odd habits, the water cycle, oceans, lakes and bodies of water, and water in science and thought.
Read the full guide
Trivia questions about the water cycle
The water cycle asks how much rain falls on the ocean, what fossil water and advection are and where the sea's salt comes from. The molecule and its odd habits adds the chemistry, so the two make water related trivia questions for a science class.
Bodies of water trivia questions and answers
Oceans, lakes and bodies of water has seawater's salt, the Dead Sea, waterways and harbors, and one feature that does not count as a body of water.
Tips
Water in science and thought is the hardest round: philosophers, the kelvin and the kilogram.
Oceans, lakes and bodies of water is the gentlest round; open with it.
Questions and answers
What are some easy water trivia questions?
Pure water has a hint of which color? About how much of the Earth's surface does liquid water cover? How are most reservoirs made? The answers are blue, 71 percent and by building a dam.
At what temperature is water densest?
At 3.98 °C. Below that, down to freezing, water expands and becomes less dense again, which is unusual among liquids.
Does the quiz say how much water to drink?
No. It asks nothing about health or how much anyone should drink. The questions are chemistry, earth science and the history of ideas about water.
How were the answers checked?
Each was read on October 3, 2026 in the English Wikipedia article linked under it: Water, Water cycle or Body of water. Figures on water scarcity are left out because they are revised every year.
Because it dissolves so many substances, what is water often called?Answer: The universal solvent. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Chemists call water amphoteric. Which behavior earns it the name?Answer: It can act as an acid and as a base. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Deuterium, found in small amounts in water, is a heavier isotope of which element?Answer: Hydrogen. Source: Wikipedia: Water
For most purposes, liquid water can be treated as which of these?Answer: Incompressible. Source: Wikipedia: Water
How hot can the water at a hydrothermal vent get?Answer: More than 400 °C. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Pure water is nearly colorless, with a hint of which color?Answer: Blue. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Sound travels a long way in water with little loss. Which sea animals use that to communicate and to sense what is around them?Answer: Cetaceans. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Water is one of two official names for the compound H2O. What is the other?Answer: Oxidane. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Water molecules cling to each other strongly because the molecule is polar. What is that kind of bonding called?Answer: Hydrogen bonding. Source: Wikipedia: Water
What angle do the two hydrogen atoms make with the oxygen atom in a water molecule?Answer: 104.5°. Source: Wikipedia: Water
What does water do, unlike most substances, as it cools toward freezing?Answer: It expands and becomes less dense. Source: Wikipedia: Water
What is the tendency of water to climb a narrow tube against gravity called?Answer: Capillary action. Source: Wikipedia: Water
The water cycle 10
Ice caps, glaciers and permanent snow store about how much of the water of the planet?Answer: 1.7 percent. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
Ice from which continent has been reliably dated to 800,000 years old?Answer: Antarctica. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
In the water cycle, what is advection?Answer: The movement of water through the atmosphere. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
The ocean is the source of about how much of global evaporation?Answer: 86 percent. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
The ocean receives about what share of the world's precipitation?Answer: 78 percent. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
Water that soaks deep into the ground refills which stores of fresh water?Answer: Aquifers. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
What is particularly old groundwater called?Answer: Fossil water. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
What is the average time a water molecule spends in one reservoir of the water cycle called?Answer: Residence time. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
What is the slow loss of gas from a planet into space called?Answer: Planetary wind. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
Where does the salt of the oceans come from?Answer: Dissolved salts eroded and carried from the land. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
Oceans, lakes and bodies of water 11
Below about what depth does practically no sunlight reach in the ocean?Answer: 1,000 meters. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Despite its name, what kind of body of water is the Dead Sea?Answer: A salt lake. Source: Wikipedia: Water
How are most reservoirs made?Answer: By building a dam. Source: Wikipedia: Body of water
In which zone of the Solar System does the Earth lie, so that water can be solid, liquid and gas there at once?Answer: The habitable zone. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Liquid water covers about how much of the surface of the Earth?Answer: 71 percent. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Most harbors are which kind of natural body of water?Answer: Bays. Source: Wikipedia: Body of water
Seawater contains on average about how much sodium chloride?Answer: 3.5 percent. Source: Wikipedia: Water
What are bodies of water called that boats can travel along?Answer: Waterways. Source: Wikipedia: Body of water
What is the study of the movement, distribution and quality of water across the Earth called?Answer: Hydrology. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Which is the smallest thing that is, rarely, counted as a body of water?Answer: A puddle. Source: Wikipedia: Body of water
Which of these is a feature of water and not a body of water in its own right?Answer: A waterfall. Source: Wikipedia: Body of water
Water in science and thought 8
A study of 1674 on rain and rivers is commonly attributed to whom?Answer: Pierre Perrault. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
James Legge's translation of the Dao De Jing, made in 1891, compares the highest excellence to what?Answer: Water. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Until 2019, which point of water was used to define the Kelvin temperature scale?Answer: The triple point. Source: Wikipedia: Water
When the kilogram was being defined, work was ordered to find the exact mass of how much water?Answer: One liter. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Which ancient Greek philosopher counted water as one of four elements, with fire, earth and air?Answer: Empedocles. Source: Wikipedia: Water
Which Chinese scientist of the Eastern Han described the water cycle accurately in his Lunheng?Answer: Wang Chong. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
Which two Greek thinkers speculated about percolation as part of the water cycle?Answer: Plato and Aristotle. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
Who is often credited as the discoverer of the modern theory of the water cycle, in 1580?Answer: Bernard Palissy. Source: Wikipedia: Water cycle
How this list was compiled
Written for this site; nothing was copied from another list. Questions and wrong choices are our own. Each explanation restates, in our own sentences, a fact from the English Wikipedia article named and linked beside the question (https://en.wikipedia.org, text under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license): Water, Water cycle and Body of water. The text of each article was fetched on October 2 or 3, 2026, and on October 3, 2026 the passage that states each fact was read in it before the question was kept. Left out on purpose: how much water a person should drink and every other health statement, figures on scarcity and deaths (they are revised each year), water law and politics, and what other trivia sets on this site already ask (transpiration, the estuary, how dew forms, the boiling point in Fahrenheit, the tributary). Levels are our estimate: easy is fair for any table, medium suits people who know the subject, hard will stump most tables. Each question also carries the date its article was read (checkedOn). Licence: own work