Glass
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40 free Glass trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Glass is one of the oldest man-made materials and one of the strangest. It starts as little more than melted sand, yet it can be spun into fibres, blown into bubbles, toughened to stop a hammer or made so fragile that it shatters at a touch. People have been shaping it for thousands of years, and nature makes its own in volcanoes and lightning strikes. This quiz covers glass in every sense. There are questions on how it is made and why it behaves the way it does, on famous glassmakers, windows and buildings, and on the glasses people wear: who invented them, how lenses work and which frames became famous. Drinking glasses get their own share, from wine and cocktail glasses to the legends behind their shapes. A few questions cover glass in films, songs and plays, including one for anyone who came looking for the television ghost story Child of Glass. It suits pub quiz fans, science and design lovers, and anyone who wears a pair of glasses and has wondered where they came from. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so even a wrong guess teaches you something.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which animal gives its name to the toughened Corning glass that protected the first iPhone's screen?
Gorilla
Gorilla Glass got its name only in 2008, months after the iPhone launched. Steve Jobs had dropped the planned plastic screen after his prototype scratched in his pocket.
Q 02Which American founding father is credited with inventing both bifocals and the glass armonica?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin, by one account, had his lenses cut in half to follow French speakers at court. His armonica, a row of glass bowls spun on a spindle, dates from 1761.
Q 03Which event fused New Mexico's desert floor into a green glass called trinitite?
An atomic test
An atomic test, code-named Trinity, melted the desert sand on 16 July 1945. Most of the glass was bulldozed and buried in 1953, and taking any from the site is now illegal.
Q 04A popular but false legend says the champagne coupe was moulded on the breast of which French queen?
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette is one of several women the tale names, but the dates rule her out. The shallow coupe was designed in England in 1663, almost a century before she was born.
Q 05Which soft drink's curvy 1915 glass bottle was designed to be recognised by touch, even in the dark?
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola wanted a bottle people would know even when it was broken. The winning designer at Indiana's Root Glass Company copied the ribbed shape of a cocoa pod from an encyclopedia picture.
Q 06Which black volcanic glass did Stone Age toolmakers chip into razor-sharp blades and arrowheads?
Obsidian
Obsidian forms when lava cools too quickly for crystals to grow, so it fractures into very sharp edges. Surgeons have even tested it for scalpel blades.
Q 07Which radioactive element makes antique yellow-green Vaseline glass glow under ultraviolet light?
Uranium
Uranium was added to the glass mix as a colouring agent, giving a pale yellowish-green that reminded people of petroleum jelly. Under a UV lamp it fluoresces bright green.
Q 08Which rock and roll star, killed in a 1959 plane crash, made horn-rimmed glasses his trademark?
Buddy Holly
Buddy Holly swapped his old frames for horn-rims on the advice of the Everly Brothers. Teenagers across America were soon asking for the same style.
Q 09Which piece of eyewear does Planters mascot Mr. Peanut wear along with a top hat and cane?
Monocle
A monocle and top hat were added by an artist to dress the character up. The original peanut figure was drawn by a schoolboy, Antonio Gentile, for a 1916 design contest.
Q 10Which band fronted by Debbie Harry topped the US and UK charts with the disco-tinged Heart of Glass?
Blondie
Blondie nicknamed it their disco song long before it became a hit. Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein had written an early, slower version back in 1974–75.
Q 11Which kitchenware brand, launched in 1915, put heat-resistant borosilicate glass into home ovens?
Pyrex
Pyrex borosilicate glass barely expands when heated, so it survives an oven without cracking and suits laboratory flasks too. Many later kitchen pieces switched to tempered soda-lime glass.
Q 12Which French château's Hall of Mirrors hosted the 1919 treaty signing that ended World War I?
Versailles
Versailles was picked on purpose by French premier Georges Clemenceau. The German Empire had been proclaimed in the same mirrored gallery in 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War.
Q 13Which sunglasses brand began in the 1930s with anti-glare aviator lenses for US military pilots?
Ray-Ban
Q 21Which metal's oxide makes cut-glass decanters heavier and more sparkling than ordinary glassware?
Lead
Lead raises both the density of the glass and the way it bends light, which gives the sparkle. It can also leach into food and drink, so safer substitutes are now common.
Q 22Which effect lets a loud note shatter a wine glass by matching the pitch it naturally rings at?
Resonance
Resonance makes each push of the sound wave arrive in step with the glass's own vibration, so the wobble grows until it cracks. Doing it reliably takes a loudspeaker and a carefully chosen glass.
Q 23Which American designer, a famous jeweller's son, made stained-glass lamps an Art Nouveau hallmark?
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Ray-Ban grew out of a request from Army Air Corps flier John Macready, who wanted lenses to cut the dazzle of high-altitude skies. Bausch & Lomb's 1936 prototype was called Anti-Glare.
Q 14Which tall, narrow stemmed glass is shaped to stop champagne's bubbles from escaping too quickly?
Flute
A flute's inward taper leaves little surface for the fizz to escape from. Holding it by the stem also keeps a warm hand away from the wine.
Q 15Which gin and vermouth cocktail lends its name to the classic stemmed glass with a cone-shaped bowl?
Martini
Martini glasses are properly just cocktail glasses, used for any drink served without ice. The long stem lets the drinker hold the glass without warming what is inside.
Q 16Which actor returns as detective Benoit Blanc in the 2022 Netflix mystery Glass Onion?
Daniel Craig
Daniel Craig first played Benoit Blanc in Knives Out in 2019. The sequel sends him to a tech billionaire's private Greek island, where a murder-mystery game is under way.
Q 17Which director completed the trilogy begun by Unbreakable and Split with the 2019 thriller Glass?
M. Night Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan set most of it in a psychiatric hospital, where the heroes and villains of both earlier films are locked up together. Samuel L. Jackson plays the title mastermind.
Q 18To which lagoon island were Venice's glassmakers moved by law in 1291, partly because of fire risk?
Murano
Murano also let Venice guard its trade secrets, since the craftsmen and their recipes were all kept in one place. Glass is still made on the island today.
Q 19Which vast iron and glass hall rose in London's Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851?
Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace was designed by Joseph Paxton, a head gardener who had spent years experimenting with greenhouses. Moved to south London in 1854, it burned down in 1936.
Q 20Which spirit lends its name to the balloon glass, also called a snifter, that is cupped in the palm?
Brandy
Brandy is warmed by the drinker's hand through the wide bowl, while the narrow rim traps the rising aroma. Strong beers such as imperial stout are often served in the same glass.
Louis Comfort Tiffany was the son of the founder of Tiffany & Co. Several of his studio's best-known shades, including a prize-winning dragonfly lamp, were the work of designer Clara Driscoll.
Q 24Which architect designed the glass pyramid built as the Louvre entrance under President Mitterrand?
I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei built it from 673 glass panes, although a stubborn myth insists there are exactly 666. An official brochure printed during construction gave the wrong number and started the rumour.
Q 25Which instrument did spectacle-maker Hans Lipperhey try to patent in the Netherlands in 1608?
Telescope
The telescope patent was refused because rival spectacle-makers claimed the same idea, though the Dutch government paid him well for copies. Galileo soon built an improved version.
Q 26Which playwright modelled the fragile Laura Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie on a real-life sister?
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams called it a memory play and filled it with his own family, including a version of his mother. Its 1944 premiere lifted him from obscurity to fame.
Q 27Which compound, the main ingredient of quartz and beach sand, makes up most ordinary window glass?
Silicon dioxide
Silicon dioxide, or silica, needs fierce heat to melt on its own. Glassmakers add soda as a flux, which brings the melting temperature down to something a furnace can manage.
Q 28Which safety glass in car side windows breaks into small blunt granules instead of jagged shards?
Tempered
Tempered panes have their surfaces locked in compression during manufacture, so a break releases the stress and the whole sheet crumbles. Windscreens use a different, layered glass.
Q 29Which country produced the first wearable eyeglasses, hailed as a new art in a friar's 1306 sermon?
Italy
Italy's first pairs were probably made in Pisa or Florence around 1290. Venice, with its fine glass, quickly became a centre of the new trade.
Q 30Which lens shape is used in glasses to correct short-sightedness?
Concave
Concave lenses, thinner in the middle than at the edges, appeared for short sight in the mid-15th century, long after the first reading glasses. Johannes Kepler gave the first correct account of why they work in 1604.