Chemistry is full of small facts that make excellent trivia questions: a symbol that does not match its name, a gas that fizzes a drink, a scientist who left gaps for elements nobody had found. Here are ten chemistry trivia questions with answers, from the easy to the tricky. Use them on paper, or as a science round in a trivia quiz online with friends and classmates.
The questions
- What is the chemical formula for water?
- What are the three main states of matter?
- Which gas makes fizzy drinks fizzy?
- What is the chemical symbol for sodium?
- What is the chemical symbol for iron?
- What is the chemical symbol for silver?
- Which scientist created the periodic table?
- What do you call a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction without being used up?
- What is the chemical symbol for potassium?
- Roughly what is absolute zero in degrees Celsius?
The answers, with a note on each
- H2O. Each water molecule has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
- Solid, liquid and gas. Plasma, found in stars and lightning, is often called the fourth state.
- Carbon dioxide. Joseph Priestley invented carbonated water in 1767.
- Na. It comes from natrium, the Latin name.
- Fe, from ferrum, the Latin word for iron.
- Ag, from the Latin argentum. Argentina is named after silver.
- Dmitri Mendeleev. He left gaps for elements not yet discovered, and predicted them correctly.
- A catalyst. Enzymes are the body's natural catalysts.
- K, from kalium, which comes from the Arabic for plant ashes.
- About minus 273 degrees. At absolute zero, atoms almost completely stop moving.
How hard is it?
Questions 1 to 3 are for the whole table. Questions 4 to 8 are medium and make good team questions. Questions 9 and 10 are hard. A neat trick is to ask the symbol questions together and prize a bonus for all three, since the Latin names make a pattern once you spot it.
How do you run it as a trivia night round?
Print the trivia questions and answers on one sheet for the host. Give the teams a minute for the symbol questions, which are strongest answered in writing. Then read the notes aloud. People remember the Latin origins long after they forget the scores. A trivia game that teaches something small and surprising earns its place in the evening.
Where can you play chemistry trivia online?
At Boardit, a free site I make, Trivia Tavern deals every player the same multiple-choice question on their own phone. It is trivia online with friends, with rounds that build from easy to hard and a final round worth double. Questions like these come up in Trivia Tavern's Science & nature category.
What follow-up questions work?
Ask for the symbols of lead and gold, which follow the same Latin pattern. Ask what a noble gas is. Ask which element is the most common in the universe. A table that enjoys the first ten will happily try ten more.
Why do so many symbols look wrong?
Because many come from Latin or Greek names, not English ones. Sodium is Na from natrium, iron is Fe from ferrum, silver is Ag from argentum, potassium is K from kalium and lead is Pb from plumbum. The last one is a nice link to plumbers, who once worked with lead pipes. A quizmaster who knows the pattern can ask the whole group a bonus question: which of these four symbols do you think comes from a Latin word? The answer is all of them.
A tip for teachers
Use the symbol questions as a quick-fire warm-up before a lesson on the periodic table. Students love finding out that the name of a metal and its symbol came from different languages.
Ahmed Moaz builds Boardit, a free browser game site.