Iron Trivia
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60 free Iron trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This iron trivia quiz covers the metal that built the modern world and the element that makes your blood red. The easy questions are the ones anyone can attempt: the chemical symbol, what rust is, why iron sticks to magnets, and the age of history named after it. From there the set moves through the science: atomic number 26, the four stable isotopes, the Curie point where iron loses its magnetism, why Earth's core is mostly iron, the supernovae that forged it, and the four grams inside every adult human body. The harder end is for chemists, historians and metallurgists: the meteoritic beads of Gerzeh and Tutankhamun's dagger, the Hittites who first smelted ore, the difference between wrought iron, cast iron and steel, Abraham Darby's coke furnace and Henry Bessemer's converter, the first iron bridge, the phosphorus-rich pillar in Delhi that has resisted rust for 1,600 years, the Hoba meteorite, banded iron formations, hemochromatosis, the mussels that reinforce their threads with iron, and the countries that dominate the ore trade. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for iron, its ores, alloys, biology and history before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Periodic Table, Chemistry and Steel quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the chemical symbol for iron?
Fe
It comes from the Latin word ferrum.
Q 02What is the atomic number of iron?
26
It sits in group 8 of the periodic table, in the first transition series.
Q 03By mass, iron is the most common element where?
On Earth as a whole
On Earth as a whole. Most of the planet's iron is locked away in the core, which is largely made of it, so at the surface it is far scarcer: only about 5% of the crust.
Q 04Which element is the only metal more abundant than iron in the Earth's crust?
Aluminium
Aluminium. It bonds so tightly with oxygen that it is locked into the crust's rocks and almost never turns up as native metal, which is why nobody isolated it until the 19th century.
Q 05Which metal is used to coat iron and steel in galvanising, shielding them from corrosion?
Zinc
Zinc. It protects twice over: the coating seals the surface, and where it is scratched the zinc corrodes first, sacrificing itself so that the iron underneath is spared.
Q 06Why does rusting keep eating into iron instead of stopping at the surface?
Rust swells and flakes off
Rust swells and flakes off, baring fresh metal to air and water. Many other metals tarnish too, but their oxide clings on as a tight skin, so the damage stops there.
Q 07Iron loses its magnetism above a temperature named after which physicist?
Pierre Curie
Pierre Curie showed in 1895 that heat wipes out a magnet's pull above a critical temperature, about 770 °C for iron. He married Marie Skłodowska that same year, and their work on radioactivity followed.
Q 08Earth's inner core is hotter than iron's melting point, so what keeps it solid?
Pressure
Pressure of more than three million atmospheres holds the inner core solid, though it is about as hot as the Sun's surface. As the planet slowly cools, the ball grows as molten metal freezes onto it.
Q 09Which naturally magnetised iron mineral provided the earliest compasses?
Lodestone
Lodestone means 'way stone'. Left free to turn, it swings to line up north and south, and an iron needle stroked with it does the same.
Q 10Iron oxide dust gives which planet its famous colour?
Mars
Mars is coated in iron minerals that have oxidised, the same chemistry that reddens an old nail. The Romans thought the colour looked like blood and named the planet after their god of war.
Q 11Iron's abundance on rocky planets is due to its production during which cosmic events?
Type Ia supernovae
Type Ia supernovae are white dwarf stars blown apart by runaway fusion. The blast forges radioactive atoms that decay into iron over the following months, and flings them out to end up in new stars and planets.
Q 12What is believed to generate Earth's magnetic field?
Electric currents in the liquid iron outer core
Electric currents in the liquid iron outer core, kept churning by escaping heat, work like a dynamo. The field they create fends off the solar wind, which would otherwise strip away the upper atmosphere.
Q 13Much of the body's spare iron is stored in which organ?
Q 21Sea mussels use iron-based bonds in their cuticles to do what?
Grip rocks in the ocean
Grip rocks in the ocean: the threads that anchor a mussel wear a thin coat cross-linked with iron, hard enough to resist grinding surf yet stretchy enough not to crack.
Q 22Iron beads buried in Egypt over 5,000 years ago are known to be meteorite metal because they are rich in what?
Nickel
Nickel is the giveaway: iron that falls from space is rich in it, while iron won from ore holds only traces. Egyptians prized the sky metal for precious objects long before anyone smelted iron.
Q 23A dagger forged from a fallen meteorite was found in whose tomb?
Tutankhamun
The liver
The liver banks spare iron and releases it when supplies run short, which is why animal liver is such an iron-rich food. It is also why the organ suffers when the body takes in too much.
Q 14Which iron-containing protein carries oxygen in red blood cells and gives them their colour?
Hemoglobin
Hemoglobin holds four iron atoms, each able to grip one oxygen molecule. Loaded with oxygen it is bright red, and once it has handed its cargo over it turns a darker, purplish shade.
Q 15Which protein carries absorbed iron through the blood to cells?
Transferrin
Transferrin picks up iron salvaged from worn-out red blood cells as well as iron from food, then ferries it to the bone marrow, where it is built into new cells.
Q 16Why is carbon monoxide poisonous?
It takes oxygen's place in the blood
It takes oxygen's place in the blood, clinging to the iron in red cells far more tightly than oxygen can, so the body's tissues starve. With no smell or colour, the gas gives no warning.
Q 17A lack of iron is the most common nutritional cause of which blood condition?
Anemia
Anemia means having too few healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen, which leaves people tired and short of breath. Young children and women who menstruate or are pregnant are affected most.
Q 18Iron deficiency can trigger pagophagia, a compulsive craving to chew which substance?
Ice
Ice. A compulsive ice-chewing habit is a recognised sign of low iron, and the craving often eases once supplements bring the level back up.
Q 19What is the medical name for the genetic iron-overload disorder?
Hemochromatosis
Hemochromatosis makes the gut take in more iron than the body can use, and the excess builds up in the organs until it damages them. The usual treatment is simply to draw off about a pint of blood on a regular schedule.
Q 20Which metal is alloyed with iron to make stainless steel resist corrosion?
Chromium
Chromium forms an invisible oxide skin on the steel that shields the iron beneath. Sheffield's Harry Brearley, often credited with the discovery in 1913, was really after a gun barrel that wouldn't wear out.
Tutankhamun's dagger turned up in 1925 inside the wrappings of his mummy. Egypt was barely smelting iron in his day, so a blade of the sky-fallen metal was a rarity fit for a king, and it got a hilt of gold.
Q 24Which Bronze Age people were long credited with being the first to smelt iron from its ores?
The Hittites
The Hittites were long said to have guarded the secret of iron and built an empire on it. Yet smelted iron turns up centuries before that empire arose around 1600 BC, so the craft is older than they are.
Q 25Which rock is fed into a blast furnace with iron ore to carry off its impurities as slag?
Limestone
Limestone burns to lime in the heat, grabs the sandy impurities in the ore and floats them off as molten slag. The slag isn't wasted either: it ends up in concrete and road beds.
Q 26The Iron Age began when iron tools displaced alloys of which metal?
Copper
Copper, hardened with a little tin, makes bronze, the costly metal of earlier elites. Iron was far cheaper, so for the first time whole peasant armies could carry metal weapons.
Q 27In which country was cast iron first produced?
China
China was pouring molten iron into moulds well over 2,000 years ago, turning out farm tools and weapons in bulk. Europe caught up only in the late Middle Ages, when it began casting cannon.
Q 28Cast iron is brittle where steel is tough because it holds far more of which element?
Carbon
Carbon makes up more than 2 percent of cast iron, against less than that in steel. The extra lets it melt easily and pour into moulds, but a hard knock cracks it instead of bending it.
Q 29Which landmark was built from puddled wrought iron rather than steel?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is about 7,300 tonnes of wrought iron held together by 2.5 million rivets. To keep it from corroding, the whole structure is repainted roughly every seven years.
Q 30In 1709 Abraham Darby began smelting iron with which fuel instead of charcoal?
Coke
Coke, baked from local coal, was cheap and strong enough to carry far heavier furnace loads than crumbly charcoal. Darby used his iron for thin-walled pots that could compete with brass ones.