41 questions with answers · tap one to see its answer

Science Trivia Questions

These 41 science trivia questions cover physics, chemistry, biology, the human body, the Earth and space, along with the scientists and discoveries behind them. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so they work as a quick science review as well as a quiz round, from questions a curious ten-year-old could answer to a few for the experts.

Every answer was checked against two independent sources on November 9, 2026.

What type of rock forms when molten magma or lava cools and hardens?
Answer: Igneous rock
Granite forms when magma cools slowly underground, while basalt forms when lava cools quickly at the surface.
Checked against USGS and Wikipedia
Which famous comet last swung past the Sun in 1986 and is expected back in 2061?
Answer: Halley's Comet
It is named after English astronomer Edmond Halley, who correctly predicted it would return in 1758.
Checked against NASA and Wikipedia
What tough cords of tissue connect muscles to bones?
Answer: Tendons
Ligaments, by contrast, connect bone to bone.
Checked against medlineplus.gov and Wikipedia
What is the name for animals that eat only plants?
Answer: Herbivores
Meat eaters are carnivores, and animals that eat both plants and meat are omnivores.
Checked against education.nationalgeographic.org and Wikipedia
What is the name of the process by which a liquid turns into a gas at its surface, even below boiling?
Answer: Evaporation
Evaporation of sweat cools the skin because it takes heat energy away from the body.
Checked against education.nationalgeographic.org, USGS, weather.gov and Wikipedia
Which unit is commonly used to measure how loud a sound is?
Answer: The decibel
The scale is logarithmic, so a 10-decibel increase means ten times more sound intensity.
Checked against National Park Service, nidcd.nih.gov and Wikipedia
A compass needle swings to point north because it lines up with what invisible feature of our planet?
Answer: Earth's magnetic field
The field is produced by swirling molten iron in Earth's outer core.
Checked against NOAA, education.nationalgeographic.org and Wikipedia
Which gas makes up most of the Sun?
Answer: Hydrogen
In the Sun's core, hydrogen nuclei fuse into helium, releasing the energy that makes sunlight.
Checked against NASA, scied.ucar.edu, esa.int and Wikipedia
What is the name of the explosion of a massive star at the end of its life?
Answer: A supernova
Many heavy elements, such as gold, are scattered through space by supernovas and collisions of dead stars.
Checked against NASA, NASA and Wikipedia
What do scientists call animals that have a backbone?
Answer: Vertebrates
Fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all vertebrates, but they make up only a small share of animal species.
Checked against nc.iucnredlist.org and Wikipedia
What is the name of the science that studies the atmosphere and the weather?
Answer: Meteorology
The name comes from a Greek word for things high in the air, which is also where the word meteor comes from.
Checked against American Heritage Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary and Wikipedia
During a thunderstorm, why do we see the lightning before we hear the thunder?
Answer: Light travels faster than sound
Counting the seconds between flash and rumble and dividing by five gives the storm's rough distance in miles.
Checked against weather.gov and Wikipedia
What kind of scientist studies rocks, minerals and the history of the Earth?
Answer: A geologist
Geologists read rock layers like pages of a book, with older layers usually lying beneath younger ones.
Checked against American Heritage Dictionary, USGS and Wikipedia
What is the name for the curved path one object follows around another in space, like the Moon around Earth?
Answer: An orbit
The Moon takes about 27 days to orbit Earth once, measured against the background stars.
Checked against NASA, NASA and Wikipedia
Which planet in our solar system spins on its side, with its axis tilted about 98 degrees?
Answer: Uranus
Because of the tilt, each pole gets about 42 years of continuous sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness.
Checked against NASA, Natural History Museum and Wikipedia
How many oxygen atoms are in one molecule of ozone?
Answer: Three
Ordinary oxygen gas in the air has two atoms per molecule, written O2, while ozone is O3.
Checked against epa.gov, NASA and Wikipedia
What is the clear, dome-shaped front surface of the eye called?
Answer: The cornea
The cornea has no blood vessels and takes much of its oxygen straight from the air.
Checked against aao.org, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and Wikipedia
Which human organ can regrow to its full size after part of it is removed?
Answer: The liver
The liver is the body's largest internal organ and handles hundreds of jobs, from storing vitamins to filtering the blood.
Checked against liver.ca, my.clevelandclinic.org and Wikipedia
Which pea-sized gland at the base of the brain is often called the master gland?
Answer: The pituitary gland
It makes growth hormone and controls several other glands, including the thyroid.
Checked against msdmanuals.com, ummhealth.org and my.clevelandclinic.org
Which two scientists published the double-helix model of DNA's structure in 1953?
Answer: James Watson and Francis Crick
Their model drew on X-ray images of DNA made in Rosalind Franklin's lab, including the famous Photo 51.
Checked against kcl.ac.uk, Wikipedia and sciencehistory.org
Which English scientist coined the word cell after looking at thin slices of cork under a microscope in 1665?
Answer: Robert Hooke
He described it in his book Micrographia, which also included a detailed drawing of a flea.
Checked against ucmp.berkeley.edu, Wikipedia and gutenberg.org
Which two metals make up most of Earth's inner core?
Answer: Iron and nickel
The inner core is solid despite being about as hot as the surface of the Sun, because of the huge pressure.
Checked against NASA, education.nationalgeographic.org and NASA
Which subatomic particle, predicted in 1964, was finally detected at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in 2012?
Answer: The Higgs boson
Peter Higgs and François Englert shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for predicting it.
Checked against home.cern and The Nobel Prize
What is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter?
Answer: Ceres
It was the first asteroid ever found, in 1801, and is now classed as a dwarf planet.
Checked against NASA and Wikipedia
In which year did astronauts begin living continuously aboard the International Space Station?
Answer: 2000
The first long-stay crew, Expedition 1, arrived on November 2, 2000, and stayed for about four and a half months.
Checked against NASA, NASA and Wikipedia
Which radioactive form of carbon do scientists measure to find the age of ancient remains?
Answer: Carbon-14
Its half-life is about 5,730 years, so it can date objects up to roughly 50,000 years old.
Checked against c14.arch.ox.ac.uk, c14.arch.ox.ac.uk and Wikipedia
Which Swedish scientist created the system of two-part Latin names used for every species?
Answer: Carl Linnaeus
In his system humans are Homo sapiens, which means wise human.
Checked against linnean.org and Wikipedia
Which part of a plant cell contains chlorophyll and carries out photosynthesis?
Answer: The chloroplast
Like mitochondria, chloroplasts have their own DNA, a clue that they were once free-living bacteria.
Checked against evolution.berkeley.edu and Wikipedia
What type of energy is stored in a stretched rubber band or an object held up high?
Answer: Potential energy
When the object moves, the stored energy turns into kinetic energy, the energy of motion.
Checked against eia.gov and Wikipedia
Which simple machine is a flat surface set at an angle, like a ramp?
Answer: An inclined plane
The other classic simple machines include the lever, the pulley, the wheel and axle, the wedge and the screw.
Checked against openstax.org and Wikipedia
Which New Zealand-born physicist discovered the atomic nucleus in 1911?
Answer: Ernest Rutherford
His gold foil experiments showed that an atom's mass is packed into a tiny, dense center; he appears on New Zealand's $100 note.
Checked against my.christchurchcitylibraries.com and Wikipedia
What is the name of the material made of a single layer of carbon atoms, first isolated in 2004?
Answer: Graphene
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on it.
Checked against The Nobel Prize and Wikipedia
Which Dutch scientist was the first to see bacteria, using microscopes he made himself?
Answer: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
His letters to London's Royal Society in the 1670s described the tiny creatures, which became known in English as animalcules.
Checked against ucmp.berkeley.edu and Wikipedia
Which scholar of the Islamic Golden Age wrote the Book of Optics, explaining that we see when light enters the eye?
Answer: Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)
He worked in Cairo in the early 1000s.
Checked against mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk and Wikipedia
Which British physicist discovered the electron in 1897?
Answer: J. J. Thomson
He won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics, and his son George later won it too.
Checked against The Nobel Prize and Wikipedia
Which English doctor showed in 1854 that cholera spread through contaminated water from a London pump?
Answer: John Snow
His investigation, including a map of cases around the Broad Street pump, helped found the science of epidemiology.
Checked against BBC and Wikipedia
Which Japanese scientist won a 2012 Nobel Prize for turning adult cells back into stem cells?
Answer: Shinya Yamanaka
His reprogrammed cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells, can grow into many types of tissue.
Checked against The Nobel Prize and Wikipedia
Which Egyptian-American chemist won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for filming chemical reactions with ultrafast laser flashes?
Answer: Ahmed Zewail
His work founded the field of femtochemistry, which studies events lasting a millionth of a billionth of a second.
Checked against The Nobel Prize and Wikipedia
Which Chinese scientist won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the malaria drug artemisinin?
Answer: Tu Youyou
She found the drug by studying ancient Chinese herbal remedies made from sweet wormwood.
Checked against The Nobel Prize and Wikipedia
Which Australian-born scientist shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for turning penicillin into a usable medicine?
Answer: Howard Florey
He shared the prize with Ernst Chain and Alexander Fleming, who had first noticed penicillin.
Checked against sciencehistory.org, sciencehistory.org and The Nobel Prize
Which Australian doctors won the 2005 Nobel Prize for showing that a bacterium causes many stomach ulcers?
Answer: Barry Marshall and Robin Warren
To prove it, Marshall drank a culture of the bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, and soon developed gastritis.
Checked against The Nobel Prize, The Nobel Prize and Wikipedia