School Chemistry Trivia Quiz

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This School Chemistry Trivia Quiz has 158 questions: 56 easy, 63 medium and 39 hard. It is free. Play it with friends in a room for 2 to 12 players, on phones or in a browser, or play it solo. Type your answers: close enough counts, so a small typo still scores.

Sample questions

20 of the 158 School chemistry questions in this pack. Think of your answer, then open it.

1. Cows burp out huge amounts of which greenhouse gas, also the main part of natural gas?

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   Methane

   It traps far more heat than CO2 over its first 20 years in the air, so cow burps worry climate scientists.

2. Which liquefied gas, at about -196°C, is used to flash-freeze food and make instant ice cream?

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   Liquid nitrogen

   It boils away in seconds at room temperature; eating it straight can badly burn your mouth and stomach.

3. 'Mad as a hatter' is often linked to felt makers poisoned by a compound of which liquid metal?

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   Mercury

   Its fumes caused trembling and mood swings; it was banned from American hat making only in 1941.

4. Pencil 'lead' has never contained any lead. Which soft form of carbon is it really?

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   Graphite

   Early users thought the black stuff was a kind of lead, and the name stuck; it's mixed with clay to set hardness.

5. Which colourless, odourless gas from badly burning stoves and heaters is called the 'silent killer'?

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   Carbon monoxide

   It grabs the blood's oxygen carriers far more tightly than oxygen does; detectors save lives.

6. The paper-thin shiny foil on Indian sweets like kaju katli is made of which metal?

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   Silver

   Called varq, it's beaten thinner than a thousandth of a millimetre and is safe to eat in tiny amounts.

7. Bread dough rises because yeast breaks down sugar and gives off which gas?

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   Carbon dioxide

   The bubbles get trapped in the stretchy dough; baking sets the holes in place.

8. Drop which mint sweets into a bottle of Diet Coke for a soaring fizzy fountain?

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   Mentos

   Their rough, pitted surface gives the dissolved CO2 millions of spots to form bubbles all at once.

9. Fire blankets work by cutting off one side of the fire triangle: heat, fuel and which other?

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   Oxygen

   Take away any one side and the fire dies; water mostly works by removing the heat.

10. Steel is iron with a small amount of which non-metal mixed in?

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    Carbon

    Even under 2% of it makes iron much harder and stronger.

11. Cheap jewellery gets a thin coat of gold using electricity. What's this process called?

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    Electroplating

    The object is the negative terminal, so metal from the solution builds up on it, atom by atom.

12. LPG cooking gas cylinders are filled mainly with propane and which other gas, also found in lighters?

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    Butane

    Under pressure it turns liquid, so a small cylinder or lighter holds a lot of it.

13. Coal miners called it 'firedamp'. Which explosive gas did Davy's safety lamp protect them from?

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    Methane

    The lamp's wire mesh soaked up heat so the flame couldn't reach the gas outside it.

14. One English chemist discovered six elements in two years by zapping compounds with electricity. What's this method called?

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    Electrolysis

    Davy found sodium and potassium this way in 1807; aluminium is still made like this today.

15. Illegal 'hooch' can blind or kill when it contains which poisonous alcohol instead of ethanol?

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    Methanol

    The body turns it into formic acid and formaldehyde, which attack the eyes' nerves first.

16. Yeast turns sugar into carbon dioxide and which alcohol, the one in beer and wine?

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    Ethanol

    Humans have used yeast this way for thousands of years; the process is called fermentation.

17. Trumpets and door handles are often made of brass: copper mixed with which metal?

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    Zinc

    More zinc makes brass paler and harder; it's popular for door handles partly because it resists germs.

18. Pour strong sulfuric acid on sugar and a steaming black column grows out of the beaker. What's the black stuff?

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    Carbon

    The acid rips the water out of the sugar; what's left is carbon, puffed up by steam into a black 'snake'.

19. Ice floats because water molecules lock into an open pattern when they freeze. Which bonds hold them apart?

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    Hydrogen bonds

    Ice is about 9% less dense than liquid water, so lakes freeze from the top down and fish survive below.

20. Hospitals give a black drink of which super-porous form of carbon to people who've swallowed poison?

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    Activated charcoal

    One gram has so many tiny pores that its inside surface can be bigger than a tennis court.

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