Concrete Trivia
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45 free Concrete trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This concrete trivia quiz covers the most-manufactured material on Earth, from Nabataean cisterns and the Pantheon's dome to the Three Gorges Dam. The easy questions handle the basics: what concrete is made of, how it hardens, why it needs steel, where the name Portland comes from and which Roman building still holds the dome record. From there it moves through the pioneers Smeaton, Aspdin, Monier, Coignet and Freyssinet, plus clinker, gypsum, fly ash, admixtures and the slump test. The harder half is for engineers and curious builders: Abrams' law, the seawater chemistry of Roman concrete, air entrainment trade-offs, tremies and bagwork, pervious and bacterial concretes, cold-weather placement, the cement industry's CO2 split between fuel and calcination, and the world records for pours and pumping. If you have played our engineering or inventions quizzes, this is the deep dive on one material. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry for concrete before publishing.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after what?
Water
Water: concrete is the most widely used substance after water, and making its cement accounts for up to 8% of global CO2 emissions.
Q 02What are the two basic components of concrete?
Aggregate bound by a cement
Aggregate bound by a cement: the aggregate must be clean, because dirt or clay clinging to it can weaken the finished concrete.
Q 03What is the chemical process by which cement sets and hardens into a solid?
Hydration
Hydration: in cold weather an accelerator is added to speed it up, and the heat the faster reaction gives off helps offset the cold.
Q 04How does mortar, used to bond bricks, differ from concrete?
It contains only fine aggregates
It contains only fine aggregates: mortar is sand, binder and water with no gravel, which gives it a smooth texture a trowel can spread between bricks.
Q 05The word 'concrete' comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Compact or condensed
Compact or condensed: Latin concretus comes from concrescere, 'to grow together', and English took it for things formed of separate parts fused into one solid mass.
Q 06Which mid-20th-century architectural style is known for raw, unfinished concrete and bold geometric forms?
Brutalism
Brutalism grew from the postwar need for affordable, functional buildings, so its raw concrete shaped social housing, universities and government offices.
Q 07Which ancient desert traders built secret underground cisterns sealed with waterproof lime mortar?
The Nabataeans
The Nabataeans marked their hidden cisterns with signs only they could read, so the desert itself became their fortress against enemies.
Q 08Roman concrete was full of chunky rubble, so how did builders usually put it in place?
Laid it by hand
Laid it by hand: the rough mix filled the gap between neater faces of brick or stone, which hid the core.
Q 09Which Roman building has the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome?
The Pantheon
The Pantheon's dome spans about 43 metres; its builders graded the concrete from heavy stone low down to light pumice near the top, easing the load on the dome.
Q 10What volcanic ingredient gives Roman concrete its remarkable durability and resistance to seawater?
Pozzolana ash
Pozzolana ash, volcanic ash from around Pozzuoli near Naples, reacts with lime and seawater to form aluminous tobermorite crystals that strengthen the concrete over centuries.
Q 11What technique has been proposed as the source of Roman concrete's 'self-healing' ability?
Hot mixing that leaves lime clasts
Hot mixing that leaves lime clasts: when water seeps into a crack, the lime dissolves and recrystallises as calcium carbonate, sealing the crack before it spreads.
Q 12Why did the US order ships built from concrete during the First World War?
Steel was scarce
Steel was scarce: but none of the ships the government ordered was finished before the war ended, so they never saw wartime service.
Q 13Which Frank Lloyd Wright house in Pennsylvania is famous for its cantilevered concrete terraces?
Fallingwater
Q 21Why do the steel bars cast inside concrete have ridges along their length?
To stop them slipping
To stop them slipping: the ridges lock each bar into the hardened concrete. Steel suits the job because it swells and shrinks with temperature about as much as concrete, so the two stay in step through hot and cold.
Q 22According to Abrams' law, what does a lower water-to-cement ratio produce?
Stronger, more durable concrete
Stronger, more durable concrete: water the cement doesn't use evaporates as the concrete dries, leaving pores that weaken it.
Q 23Fly ash, a common mineral admixture, is a by-product of what?
Coal-fired power plants
Fallingwater's cantilevered terraces sagged for decades, so in 2001-02 engineers strengthened them with high-strength steel cables to stop further sagging.
Q 14John Smeaton used hydraulic lime in the 1750s to build which English lighthouse?
Eddystone
Eddystone: after cracks appeared in the rock beneath it, the tower's upper part was taken down and rebuilt on Plymouth Hoe.
Q 15Who patented Portland cement in 1824?
Joseph Aspdin
Joseph Aspdin's cement was not fired hot enough to match modern Portland cement; it was a first step, refined into the modern material in the 1840s.
Q 16Why was Portland cement named after Portland?
It looked like Portland stone
It looked like Portland stone: the name implied the cement matched the high quality of that widely used English building stone.
Q 17Which French gardener patented iron-reinforced concrete plant tubs in 1867 and is usually credited with inventing reinforced concrete?
Joseph Monier
Joseph Monier sold his patent rights outside France, and German engineer Gustav Adolf Wayss bought the German rights and built companies around the technique.
Q 18Which French industrialist built an iron-reinforced concrete house near Paris in the 1850s?
François Coignet
François Coignet put iron in the walls to keep them from spreading or overturning.
Q 19Which French engineer patented prestressed concrete in 1928?
Eugène Freyssinet
Eugène Freyssinet: prestressed concrete is squeezed before it bears loads, so it can form thinner, lighter bridges and roofs than ordinary reinforced concrete.
Q 20Portland cement is made by heating limestone with clay or shale and grinding the resulting product with what?
Gypsum
Gypsum is ground in with the kiln product to supply sulfate that slows the early setting reaction, giving crews time to place and finish the concrete.
Coal-fired power plants: fly ash is captured from their flue gases, and reusing it in concrete keeps much of it out of landfills and ash ponds.
Q 24Why do builders add tiny air bubbles to concrete?
Frost resistance
Frost resistance: the bubbles cut the damage done when water inside freezes, and as a bonus they make the wet mix flow more easily.
Q 25Why is calcium chloride, an effective accelerator, prohibited in some countries?
It corrodes steel reinforcement
It corrodes steel reinforcement: chloride ions attack the bars, and as the rust expands it cracks the concrete around them.
Q 26What is asphalt concrete commonly called in the UK and Ireland?
Tarmac
Tarmac: in 1901 Edgar Hooley noticed that a patch where spilled tar had been covered over stayed dust-free and unrutted, and he patented tar macadam.
Q 27Which carmaker's concrete factory in Turin had a test track on its roof?
Fiat
Fiat: after the factory closed in 1982, Renzo Piano turned it into a centre with shops, hotels and an auditorium.
Q 28When a concrete beam sags under a load, which kind of stress acts along its bottom face?
Tension
Tension: the underside stretches as the beam sags, and because concrete cracks when stretched, steel bars are cast near the bottom to carry the pull.
Q 29Which famous statue is built of reinforced concrete clad in a mosaic of soapstone tiles?
Christ the Redeemer
Christ the Redeemer is struck by lightning so often, despite its lightning rods, that a storm in 2014 broke off one of its fingers.
Q 30Which dam, dedicated in 1935, was cooled by pipes carrying refrigerated water through its concrete?
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam was poured as separate columns of blocks, and once they had cooled, grout was forced into the gaps to join them into one solid mass.