Arsenic
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50 free Arsenic trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Arsenic has been a pigment, a tonic, a beauty aid, a weapon of war and, most famously, the poisoner's favourite. Few elements have such a long criminal record, or so many strange fun facts attached to them. This quiz covers the chemistry that makes arsenic what it is, the murders and accidents that made it notorious, the science that finally caught the poisoners, and the surprising places the element still turns up, from medicine and electronics to food and drinking water. It suits chemistry students, true-crime readers and anyone who likes history with a dark streak. Every question comes with an explanation, so you pick up the story behind each answer as you play.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Heating arsenic in air releases fumes with which telltale smell, also noticed when a hammer strikes arsenic ores?
Garlic
Garlic is the classic warning sign of arsenic, and the same reek clings to cacodyl, an arsenic compound named from the Greek word for stink.
Q 02One theory blames Napoleon's 1821 death in exile on arsenic fumes from which green furnishing in his damp house?
Wallpaper
Wallpaper coloured with arsenic green can give off toxic gas when mould grows on it, though most historians now think stomach cancer killed Napoleon.
Q 03A 2006 study found which champion racehorse of Depression-era Australia died in 1932 of a massive arsenic overdose?
Phar Lap
Phar Lap raced in an era when arsenic tonics were so routine in stables that one vet reckoned 90 per cent of horses carried the poison.
Q 04Tube wells sunk to give villagers safe drinking water caused mass arsenic poisoning in which South Asian country?
Bangladesh
Bangladesh swapped germ-ridden pond water for groundwater that turned out to be naturally laced with arsenic, and nobody had tested the wells for it.
Q 05In the comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, the Brewster sisters serve arsenic to lonely old men in which homemade drink?
Elderberry wine
Elderberry wine in the play hides arsenic, strychnine and a pinch of cyanide, and the curtain falls as the aunts offer one last glass.
Q 06In 1900, more than 6,000 people in England were poisoned by arsenic that had tainted which popular drink?
Beer
Beer brewed with impure sugar was to blame: the sugar had been made using acid contaminated with arsenic, and more than 70 drinkers died.
Q 07Salvarsan, an arsenic-based drug launched in 1910, was the first effective treatment for which infectious disease?
Syphilis
Syphilis was treated with the arsenic drug, also known as compound 606, until penicillin took over in the 1940s.
Q 08Arsenic trioxide, the poisoner's notorious 'white arsenic', is now an approved medicine for one form of which cancer?
Leukemia
Leukemia of the acute promyelocytic type is treated with arsenic trioxide, sold under the brand name Trisenox and approved by the US FDA in 2000.
Q 09Victorian women swallowed arsenic mixed with vinegar and chalk in the hope of gaining which fashionable look?
Paler skin
Paler skin was prized as proof that a woman did not have to work outdoors in the fields.
Q 10The arsenic pigment Paris green is said to owe its name to killing which pests in the sewers of Paris?
Rats
Rats in the sewers are the usual story behind the name; from 1867 American farmers sprayed the pigment on potato beetles, and it became the first widely used chemical insecticide.
Q 11Before forensic tests existed, the symptoms of arsenic poisoning were easily mistaken for which epidemic disease?
Cholera
Cholera brings the same violent vomiting and diarrhoea, so a slow course of arsenic could pass for a natural death in an age of epidemics.
Q 12Arsenic earned which nickname because impatient heirs were suspected of using it to hurry rich relatives into the grave?
Inheritance powder
Inheritance powder began as the French phrase poudre de succession, coined when arsenic was the discreet way to remove a wealthy relation.
Q 13Which staple grain is particularly prone to soaking up arsenic from the soil and water it grows in?
Rice
Q 21Which medieval German friar, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, is credited with isolating arsenic around 1250?
Albertus Magnus
Albertus Magnus got the element by heating soap with an arsenic sulfide, and in 1941 he was named the patron saint of natural scientists.
Q 22The word arsenic traces back to a Persian name for which golden-yellow mineral, once ground up as a painter's pigment?
Orpiment
Orpiment is an arsenic sulfide whose own Latin name means gold pigment, partly because people once believed it really contained gold.
Q 23Which Swedish chemist gave his name to the vivid arsenic-based green pigment he invented in 1775?
Carl Wilhelm Scheele
Rice can shed about a third of its inorganic arsenic if it is cooked in plenty of extra water that is then drained away.
Q 14Arsenic is added in small amounts to harden which heavy metal for car batteries and ammunition?
Lead
Lead in car batteries is strengthened by a tiny dose of arsenic, and as much as 2% of all arsenic produced ends up in shot and bullets.
Q 15Arsenic belongs to which small class of elements, alongside boron, silicon, germanium, antimony and tellurium?
Metalloids
Metalloids sit between metals and nonmetals, and arsenic shows why: its stable form has a metallic sheen yet is brittle enough to crush.
Q 16Heated at normal pressure, arsenic never melts but undergoes which change, also seen when dry ice turns to vapour?
Sublimation
Sublimation takes arsenic straight from solid to gas at 614 °C; it will only melt if squeezed to about 28 times atmospheric pressure.
Q 17Which British chemist devised the 1836 method that first let courts prove arsenic was in a victim's body?
James Marsh
James Marsh built his detector in anger after a man accused of poisoning his grandfather's coffee was acquitted, then later confessed.
Q 18Which classic 19th-century French novel features a debt-ridden country wife who kills herself by swallowing arsenic?
Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary caused such a scandal that its author, Gustave Flaubert, was tried for obscenity in 1857 and acquitted.
Q 19In 1858, about 20 people in Bradford, England, died after arsenic was accidentally mixed into which sweets?
Peppermint lozenges
Peppermint lozenges were routinely bulked out with powdered gypsum to save on sugar, but the chemist's shop handed over arsenic by mistake.
Q 20Which arsenic-based poison, created in Sicily around 1630, was sold to Italian wives wanting rid of their husbands?
Aqua Tofana
Aqua Tofana was disguised in bottles labelled as the Manna of St Nicholas, and more than 600 victims are alleged to have died of it.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele saw his green spread to paints, textiles, candles and even children's toys before its dangers were understood.
Q 24Which arsenic-based blister agent, stockpiled by the US after World War I, was dubbed the 'Dew of Death'?
Lewisite
Lewisite smells of geraniums, and the antidote invented against it, British anti-Lewisite, became a standard treatment for arsenic poisoning.
Q 25In 2010 NASA-backed scientists claimed a bacterium found where in California could build its DNA using arsenic?
Mono Lake
Mono Lake's microbe, GFAJ-1, made headlines worldwide, but later studies found no arsenic in its DNA and the paper was retracted in 2025.
Q 26Arsenic is so toxic partly because it mimics which element, sitting directly above it in the periodic table?
Phosphorus
Phosphorus is vital to the body's energy chemistry, so cells that take up look-alike arsenic compounds find their energy supply sabotaged.
Q 27Arsenic poisoning can leave white bands known as Mees' lines across which part of the body?
Nails
Nails record the poisoning like a calendar: the bands grow out toward the tip and vanish only when they are trimmed off.
Q 28Arsenic is paired with which soft metal, able to melt in a person's hand, to make chips for lasers and LEDs?
Gallium
Gallium arsenide chips run much faster than silicon ones and can turn electricity directly into light, though they cost far more to make.
Q 29Until the 1980s, arsenic was a routine pest-proofing ingredient in which craft?
Taxidermy
Taxidermy used an arsenic-laced soap to keep insects off mounted skins, and old specimens remain a hazard to the museum staff who handle them.
Q 30Which family of Pope Alexander VI was rumoured to kill rivals with cantarella, a poison thought to be arsenic?
The Borgias
The Borgias supposedly sprinkled the white powder on food or into wine, though no writer of their own day ever mentions the poison.