Lithium Trivia
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50 free Lithium trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This lithium trivia quiz covers the third element on the periodic table and the metal the 21st century runs on. The easy questions are the ones anyone can attempt: the symbol, the atomic number, why it is stored under oil, what colour it burns and the batteries in every phone and electric car. From there the set moves through the science: the least dense of all metals, one of three that float on water, the highest specific heat of any solid, its Big Bang origins and the cosmological lithium problem, its rarity in the Solar System and its two stable isotopes. The harder end is for chemists and history buffs: the Swedish mine and Berzelius's laboratory where it was found in 1817, William Brande's first isolation, Cockcroft and Walton splitting the atom with it in 1932, lithium deuteride and the Castle Bravo runaway, John Cade's guinea pigs and the 1949 paper that made it a psychiatric drug, the 7 Up recipe, Salar de Uyuni and the Lithium Triangle, Greenbushes and the 2019 Nobel Prize for the lithium-ion battery. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for lithium, its uses, its mines and its history before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Periodic Table, Chemistry and Iron quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the chemical symbol for lithium?
Li
Li is its symbol, and people who take lithium as a medicine have regular blood tests, since too much of it in the blood can be toxic.
Q 02Lithium follows which element in the periodic table?
Helium
Helium comes just before it, and because helium's two electrons fill the first shell, lithium's third electron has to start a new one, opening the table's second row.
Q 03The name lithium comes from the Greek word for what?
Stone
Stone was chosen, it is thought, because lithium was found in a mineral, while the similar metals already known had been traced to plants or animals.
Q 04Lithium holds which record among all metals under standard conditions?
Least dense
Least dense of all metals, lithium is only about half as dense as water, so it floats even on oil.
Q 05In 2013, which new airliner was grounded worldwide after its lithium-ion batteries overheated and caught fire?
Boeing 787
Boeing 787 jets stayed on the ground for about three months, until Boeing redesigned the battery system so any fire would be contained.
Q 06Why is lithium metal usually stored in an inert gas or coated in petroleum jelly?
It is highly reactive and flammable
It is highly reactive and flammable, and it is one of the few metals that react with nitrogen gas, the main part of air.
Q 07Lithium heads which group of the periodic table?
The alkali metals
The alkali metals owe their name to an Arabic word usually traced to 'the ashes', since alkali was first drawn from the ashes of burnt plants.
Q 08Where does lithium rank for reactivity within its own periodic-table group?
The least reactive of all
The least reactive of all, lithium holds its lone outer electron closest to the nucleus, so it gives it up less easily and reacts more gently with water than sodium.
Q 09Which Samsung phone was scrapped in 2016 after units kept catching fire because of faulty lithium-ion batteries?
Galaxy Note 7
Galaxy Note 7 owners were first sent replacement phones meant to be safe, but some of those caught fire too, so Samsung recalled every unit and ended the model.
Q 10Long-lasting lithium-iodide batteries became the standard power source for which implanted medical device?
Pacemaker
Pacemakers powered by these cells can keep going for around a decade, and when the battery runs down, the unit is swapped for a new one.
Q 11What colour do lithium salts give to a flame?
Bright red
Bright red is the colour its compounds give a flame, but when lithium metal itself burns strongly, the flame turns a dazzling white.
Q 12In Star Trek, dilithium crystals are essential for powering what?
The warp drive
The warp drive depends on them in the show, but real dilithium is just two lithium atoms bonded into a molecule, observed as a gas rather than a hard crystal.
Q 13Which mission's crew had to rig a makeshift adapter so the command module's lithium hydroxide canisters fit the lunar module?
Apollo 13
Apollo 13's crew was using the lunar module as a lifeboat after an oxygen tank exploded, and it lacked enough canisters, so they built a 'mailbox' that engineers had designed and tested on the ground.
Q 21Fallout from 1954's Castle Bravo H-bomb, its yield swollen by lithium-7, sickened the crew of what?
Japanese fishing boat
A Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon No. 5, was dusted with fallout, and one of its 23 crew later died. Designers had expected the lithium-7 to stay inert.
Q 22Lithium demand has soared mainly because of batteries for what?
Electric cars
Electric cars set off a lithium rush, and prices soared in the early 2020s, then slumped amid fears of oversupply.
Q 23Lithium-ion battery pioneer John Goodenough set which Nobel Prize record when he shared the 2019 chemistry award?
Oldest-ever winner
Q 14In the late 1940s, lithium chloride was sold in the US as a substitute for which everyday product?
Table salt
Table salt substitutes made with it were sold to people cutting down on sodium, but instead of protecting their health, they poisoned many users, some fatally.
Q 15In 2017, Apple admitted slowing some older iPhones whose lithium-ion batteries had aged, to prevent what?
Sudden shutdowns
Sudden shutdowns were the risk Apple cited, and amid the controversy it apologised and cut the price of a replacement battery to $29 for a year.
Q 16During the 1970s energy crisis, an early rechargeable lithium battery was developed at what kind of company?
An oil company
An oil company, Exxon, backed the work because it feared oil would run out and wanted to branch into energy technology that didn't depend on petroleum.
Q 17Lithium-7 was created in which process very early in the universe's history?
Big Bang nucleosynthesis
Big Bang nucleosynthesis made it, yet old stars hold several times less lithium-7 than the theory predicts, a mismatch known as the cosmological lithium problem.
Q 18Astronomers use a 'lithium test' to tell brown dwarfs apart from what?
Red dwarf stars
Red dwarf stars get hot enough inside to fuse their lithium and use it up, while most brown dwarfs never do, so a dim dwarf that still shows lithium is likely a brown dwarf.
Q 19In 1932, Cockcroft and Walton fired protons at lithium, becoming the first to do what with a particle accelerator?
Split the atom
Split the atom was the feat, and it came when Walton, alone at the machine, saw telltale flashes of light on a screen and called in Cockcroft and Rutherford to confirm them.
Q 20Which compound of lithium serves as fusion fuel in staged thermonuclear weapons?
The deuteride
The deuteride is a stable solid that packs in more hydrogen than liquid fuel does, which makes it far easier to handle and to build into a weapon.
Oldest-ever winner of a Nobel Prize, at 97, he was still doing research in the lab when the prize was announced.
Q 24Which company first commercialised the lithium-ion battery, in 1991?
Sony
Sony needed a smaller, lighter battery for its camcorders, and the rechargeable lithium-ion cells it brought to market went on to power mobile phones and laptops.
Q 25Why must spare lithium batteries fly in cabin bags rather than in checked luggage?
So crew can tackle a fire
So crew can tackle a fire if one overheats, and after a 2025 cabin fire suspected to have started with a power bank, South Korea barred power banks from overhead bins too.
Q 26What makes a swallowed lithium coin battery so dangerous for a young child?
It can burn through tissue
It can burn through tissue, since saliva lets it pass a current that makes a caustic alkali, which is why Duracell began coating some coin cells with a bitter taste.
Q 27Lithium-rich brine pumped from under South American deserts is concentrated mainly how?
Sunshine evaporates water
Sunshine evaporates water from the brine as it sits in vast shallow pools for months, so in rainier, cooler places the process runs slower.
Q 28Which three countries form the Lithium Triangle?
Argentina, Bolivia and Chile
Argentina, Bolivia and Chile share it, but while Chile and Argentina became major lithium exporters, Bolivia, whose deposits are harder to process, still produced little by the mid-2020s.
Q 29What is the Salar de Uyuni?
The world's largest salt flat
The world's largest salt flat is the crust left behind when a vast prehistoric lake on the Andean plateau dried up.
Q 30After rain, the Salar de Uyuni becomes the world's largest what?
Mirror
Mirror is what it becomes when a thin sheet of water reflects the sky, and the surface is so level that scientists use it to calibrate satellite instruments.