Geysers Trivia
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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.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'geyser', borrowed from the name of one hot spring, means what?
Gusher
'Geyser' means gusher: it comes from Geysir, whose name derives from Old Norse geysa, 'to gush'; the word entered English in the late 18th century.
Q 02The Great Geysir, which gave its name to every geyser on Earth, is in which country?
Iceland
The Great Geysir lies in Iceland's 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
About half of the world's geysers are in Yellowstone, whose basins hold more geysers than any other field on Earth alongside thousands of hot springs.
Q 04Yellowstone contains approximately how many geysers?
300 to 500
Yellowstone has roughly 300 to 500 geysers, more than anywhere else on Earth; most are small, spouting only a foot or two, and the famous giants are the exception.
Q 05What is the world's tallest active geyser?
Steamboat
Steamboat Geyser is the world's tallest active geyser; its rare major eruptions throw water more than 300 feet into the air, on an erratic timetable of days to decades.
Q 06The world's tallest active geyser sits in which Yellowstone basin?
Norris
The tallest active geyser lies in the Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone's hottest and most changeable basin; its two vents sit about 20 feet apart, the north vent throwing the tallest columns.
Q 07The tallest active geyser on Earth fell silent in 1911 and did not erupt again until which year?
1961
After a major eruption in 1911 the geyser went quiet for half a century, erupting again in 1961; it then had active phases in the 1960s, 1980s and from 2018.
Q 08Old Faithful was named in 1870 by which expedition?
Washburn–Langford–Doane
The Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition named Old Faithful on 18 September 1870 on entering the Upper Geyser Basin; it was the first geyser in the park to receive a name.
Q 09On average, how long is the gap between Old Faithful's eruptions?
About 90 minutes
Old Faithful's eruptions average about 90 minutes apart, with intervals ranging from roughly 35 to 120 minutes; longer eruptions are followed by longer waits.
Q 10What is the average height of an Old Faithful eruption?
145 feet
Old Faithful's eruptions average about 145 feet high, ranging from 106 to 185 feet; each throws 3,700 to 8,400 US gallons of boiling water over one and a half to five minutes.
Q 11More than how many Old Faithful eruptions have been recorded?
1,000,000
More than 1,000,000 Old Faithful eruptions have been recorded since 1870; Harry Woodward first described the link between an eruption's duration and the wait before the next in 1938.
Q 12Old Faithful is the best-known example of which of the two main geyser types?
Cone
Old Faithful is a cone geyser, erupting in steady jets from a mound of sinter; fountain geysers, the other type, erupt from a pool in a series of violent bursts.
Q 13What is the tallest predictable geyser on Earth?
Grand
Grand Geyser, a fountain-type geyser in the Upper Geyser Basin, is the tallest predictable geyser, reaching up to 200 feet for 9 to 12 minutes; Ferdinand Hayden named it in 1871.
Q 21What is the only feasible way for visitors to reach the Valley of Geysers?
Helicopter
The Valley of Geysers has no roads; visitors fly in by helicopter from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, about 180 km away, and only a few thousand tourists a year make the trip.
Q 22El Tatio, the largest geyser field in the Southern Hemisphere, is in the Andes of which country?
Chile
El Tatio lies in northern Chile's Antofagasta region, near San Pedro de Atacama, at about 4,320 metres; it is the third-largest geyser field in the world.
Q 23The name 'tatio' comes from which indigenous language?
Kunza
Kunza, the almost extinct language of the Atacameño people, gives 'tatio' meanings such as 'oven' and 'grandfather', the old man whose tears are said to form the geysers.
Q 14Geyserite, the deposit that coats geysers, is a form of what?
Silica
Geyserite is opaline silica: hot water dissolves silica from rocks such as rhyolite, and as it cools the silica drops out as opal, which slowly recrystallises into quartz.
Q 15The heat that drives a geyser comes from what?
Magma close to the surface
Geysers are driven by magma close to the surface, which is why nearly all lie in areas of recent volcanic activity such as the Yellowstone caldera.
Q 16What feature of a geyser's underground plumbing sets it apart from an ordinary hot spring?
Constrictions that build pressure
A geyser's plumbing has constrictions that build pressure as they trap water; cooler water above presses on hotter water beneath like a pressure-cooker lid, letting it superheat until it flashes to steam.
Q 17Which bacterium, isolated from a Yellowstone hot spring in 1969, gave biotechnology its key PCR enzyme?
Thermus aquaticus
Thermus aquaticus, isolated by Thomas Brock from a Yellowstone hot spring in 1969, supplies the heat-stable Taq polymerase that makes PCR possible; thermophiles prefer 50 to 70 °C.
Q 18The world's second-largest geyser field, the Valley of Geysers, is on which Russian peninsula?
Kamchatka
The Valley of Geysers lies on Kamchatka, in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve; its six-kilometre basin holds roughly ninety geysers, second only to Yellowstone.
Q 19The Valley of Geysers was discovered by local scientist Tatyana Ustinova in which year?
1941
Tatyana Ustinova, a hydrologist at the Kronotsky reserve, found the valley in April 1941 while tracing the Shumnaya river; little exploration followed until the 1970s.
Q 20In June 2007 a massive mudflow inundated how much of the Valley of Geysers?
Two thirds
On 3 June 2007 a landslide and mudflow buried about two thirds of the Valley of Geysers and dammed the Geysernaya river; many geysers returned once the new lake partly drained.
Q 24How high did eruptions of Waimangu, the largest geyser ever known, reach in the early 1900s?
About 460 metres
Waimangu erupted to about 460 metres (1,500 feet) between 1900 and 1904, the tallest geyser ever recorded; its plumbing had been created by a huge volcanic eruption in 1886.
Q 25The name Waimangu, given by Māori, means what?
Black waters
Waimangu is Māori for 'black waters' (wai, water; mangu, black), because the geyser hurled up water darkened by 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
A landslide in 1904 altered the water table around Lake Tarawera, starving the geyser; its eruptions had grown shorter and weaker for weeks before stopping in November 1904.
Q 27One of four sightseers killed at Waimangu in 1903 was an international in which sport?
Rugby
Joe Warbrick, who had captained the 1888 New Zealand Natives rugby tour, died with David McNaughton and sisters Ruby and Catherine Nicholls when a sudden eruption scalded and swept them away in August 1903.
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
Strokkur erupts roughly every 6 to 10 minutes, a regularity that makes it one of the few natural geysers tourists can count on seeing during a short visit.
Q 30Strokkur has erupted regularly since 1963, when locals did what on the advice of the Geysir Committee?
Cleared out its blocked conduit
In 1963 locals cleared out its blocked conduit at the bottom of Strokkur's basin on the Geysir Committee's advice, restoring the regular eruptions that its mostly dormant neighbour Geysir lacks.