59 free Geysers trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Geysers are rare. They need heat from shallow magma, plenty of groundwater and, most of all, the right underground plumbing, and that combination exists in only a handful of places on Earth. This quiz covers all of them: Yellowstone, which holds about half the world's geysers, the Valley of Geysers on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, El Tatio high in the Chilean Andes, New Zealand's Taupō Volcanic Zone and the Icelandic hot spring that gave the word 'geyser' to English. You will meet the famous individuals (Old Faithful, Steamboat, Strokkur, Grand, Beehive) and the strange ones: a cold-water geyser on the Rhine driven by carbon dioxide, a Pennsylvania geyser powered by a burning coal seam, an accidental geyser in Nevada now owned by Burning Man, and the ice plumes of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Questions run from easy (what heats a geyser) to expert (which neighbouring geyser warns that Grand is about to go). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on geysers, individual geysers and geyser fields, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our volcanoes, Yellowstone National Park and Iceland quizzes next.
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Q 01The English word 'geyser' comes from the name of one Icelandic hot spring and means what?
Gusher
The word entered English in the late 18th century, borrowed from Geysir, which first erupted in the 14th century.
Q 02The Great Geysir, which gave its name to every geyser on Earth, is in which country?
Iceland
It sits in the Haukadalur valley on the slopes of the Laugarfjall lava dome, about 50 metres from its livelier neighbour Strokkur.
Q 03Roughly what share of the world's geysers are in Yellowstone National Park?
About half
They are spread across nine geyser basins alongside thousands of hot springs.
Q 04Yellowstone contains approximately how many geysers?
300 to 500
Most of them are small, erupting to only a foot or two; the famous giants are the exception.
Q 05What is the world's tallest active geyser?
Steamboat
Its major eruptions can throw water more than 300 feet into the air, though its timetable is erratic.
Q 06The world's tallest active geyser sits in which Yellowstone basin?
Norris
It has two vents about 20 feet apart; the north vent produces the tallest columns.
Q 07The tallest active geyser on Earth fell silent in 1911 and did not erupt again until which year?
1961
Its 2018 active phase produced several eruptions lasting more than an hour.
Q 08Old Faithful was named in 1870 by which expedition?
Washburn–Langford–Doane
It was the first geyser in the park to receive a name; the party entered the Upper Geyser Basin on 18 September 1870.
Q 09On average, how long is the gap between Old Faithful's eruptions?
About 90 minutes
The interval ranges from as short as 35 minutes to as long as 120 minutes.
Q 10What is the average height of an Old Faithful eruption?
145 feet
Each eruption throws 3,700 to 8,400 US gallons of boiling water and lasts one and a half to five minutes.
Q 11More than how many Old Faithful eruptions have been recorded?
1,000,000
Harry Woodward first described a mathematical relationship between eruption duration and interval in 1938.
Q 12Old Faithful erupts in steady jets from a mound of sinter, making it an example of which type of geyser?
Cone
The other type erupts from a pool of water in a series of intense, sometimes violent bursts.
Q 13What is the tallest predictable geyser on Earth?
Grand
Its fountain reaches as much as 200 feet and lasts 9 to 12 minutes; it was named by Ferdinand Hayden in 1871.
Q 21What is the only feasible way for visitors to reach the Valley of Geysers?
Helicopter
About 3,000 tourists a year made the trip before the 2007 disaster.
Q 22El Tatio, the largest geyser field in the Southern Hemisphere, is in the Andes of which country?
Chile
It sits at 4,320 metres above sea level and ranks third in the world by size.
Q 23The word 'tatio' comes from which nearly extinct language?
Kunza
Known meanings include 'oven' and 'to appear', and it has also been translated as 'grandfather', whose tears form the geysers.
How high did eruptions of Waimangu, the largest geyser ever known, reach in the early 1900s?
Q 14Geyserite, the deposit that coats geysers, is a form of what?
Silica
Hot water dissolves it from rocks such as rhyolite; as the water cools it drops out as opal, which slowly anneals into quartz.
Q 15The heat that drives a geyser comes from what?
Magma close to the surface
Geysers are almost always found in areas of recent volcanic activity.
Q 16What feature of a geyser's underground plumbing sets it apart from an ordinary hot spring?
Constrictions that build pressure
Cooler water above presses down on hotter water beneath like the lid of a pressure cooker, letting the water superheat.
Q 17Which heat-loving bacterium, first found in geysers, became the most important thermophile for biotech?
Thermus aquaticus
Thermophiles prefer 50 to 70 °C, and hyperthermophiles grow best at 80 to 110 °C.
Q 18The world's second-largest geyser field, the Valley of Geysers, is on which Russian peninsula?
Kamchatka
The six-kilometre basin holds roughly ninety geysers and is part of the Kronotsky Nature Reserve.
Q 19The Valley of Geysers was discovered by local scientist Tatyana Ustinova in which year?
1941
From the 1980s the Soviet Union promoted it as one of the tourist magnets of the Russian Far East.
Q 20In June 2007 a massive mudflow inundated how much of the Valley of Geysers?
Two thirds
The slide happened while the documentary Wild Russia was filming, and the programme includes before-and-after footage.
About 460 metres
Its plumbing was apparently created by a huge volcanic eruption in 1886, and it briefly excited worldwide interest.
Q 25The name Waimangu, given by Māori, means what?
Black waters
The water it threw up was black with rocks and mud from the surrounding terrain.
Q 26Waimangu stopped erupting in November 1904 after a landslide changed the water table of which lake?
Tarawera
Its eruptions had grown shorter and weaker for several weeks before ceasing entirely.
Q 27One of four sightseers killed at Waimangu in 1903 was an international in which sport?
Rugby
Joe Warbrick, David McNaughton and sisters Ruby and Catherine Nicholls were scalded and swept away in a sudden eruption.
Q 28Strokkur, the reliable geyser in the Haukadalur valley, has a name meaning what?
Churn
It usually reaches 15 to 20 metres, occasionally 40; in 1815 it was estimated at 60.
Q 29How often does Strokkur typically erupt?
6 to 10 minutes
That regularity makes it one of the very few natural geysers tourists can count on seeing.
Q 30Strokkur has erupted regularly since 1963, when locals did what on the advice of the Geysir Committee?
Cleared out its blocked conduit
Its neighbour Geysir, by contrast, spends most of its time dormant.