Math and Science Trivia
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100 free Math and Science trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
56 free math and science trivia questions with answers. This math and science trivia set pairs the two subjects that share a classroom wall. Half the questions are about numbers and the people who tamed them: pi, prime numbers, the Fibonacci sequence, Roman numerals, binary, Fermat's Last Theorem, Ada Lovelace and Ramanujan's taxi number. The other half runs through physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and space: the periodic table, DNA, the speed of light, absolute zero, Marie Curie's two Nobel Prizes, penicillin and the age of the universe. The difficulty climbs as you go. The early questions suit a family game night or a middle-school quiz bowl warm-up; the later ones on the Möbius strip, John Wallis and James Chadwick will stretch a science teacher. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation that adds one extra fact. Each answer has been checked against a primary reference source rather than another trivia list, so a wrong answer key will not derail your quiz night. Want more of one side? BrainPickle also has separate math trivia and science trivia pages, plus science trivia for kids.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Pi, about 3.14159, is the ratio of a circle's circumference to which of its measurements?
Its diameter
Its diameter: pi is the same for every circle, so any wheel rolls just over three times its own width in one full turn.
Q 02The sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 is named after which mathematician?
Fibonacci
Fibonacci: he brought the sequence to European readers in his 1202 book Liber Abaci, through a puzzle about breeding rabbits.
Q 03The Pythagorean theorem says the square on which side equals the sum of the squares on the other two?
The hypotenuse
The hypotenuse: US President James Garfield published his own proof of the theorem in 1876, while he was still a congressman.
Q 04In flat geometry, the interior angles of a triangle add up to how many degrees?
180
180: on a curved surface such as a globe, a triangle's angles add up to more, as much as 540 degrees.
Q 05A googol is 10 raised to which power?
100
100: Edward Kasner's young nephew is said to have coined the name, and Google's founders named their company as a play on it.
Q 06A Möbius strip is a famous example of what kind of surface?
Non-orientable
Non-orientable: give a paper strip a half twist before taping its ends, and the loop has only one side and one edge.
Q 07Which mathematician finally proved Fermat's Last Theorem in 1994, after centuries of failed attempts?
Andrew Wiles
Andrew Wiles: his first proof, announced in 1993, had a flaw, and fixing it took another year and help from Richard Taylor.
Q 08Which theorem, proved in 1976, was the first major theorem proved by computer?
Four colour theorem
Four colour theorem: four colours can fill any map with no neighbours matching, but some mathematicians did not accept a proof no human could check by hand.
Q 09Which 17th-century English mathematician first used the sideways-eight infinity symbol?
John Wallis
John Wallis: during the English Civil War he was also Parliament's codebreaker, deciphering Royalist messages.
Q 10In Roman numerals, what number does the letter M represent?
1000
1000: a Roman mile was mille passus, a thousand paces, which is where the English word mile comes from.
Q 11Which famous puzzle asks whether to switch doors?
Monty Hall problem
Monty Hall problem: when Marilyn vos Savant wrote in Parade that switching wins two times in three, thousands of readers, PhDs among them, wrote in to insist she was wrong.
Q 12In computing, what is a single binary digit, a 0 or a 1, called?
Bit
Bit: computer pioneer John Tukey coined the word by squeezing 'binary digit' into three letters, probably because 'bit' already meant a small piece.
Q 13Ada Lovelace's notes, often called the first computer program, were written for which machine?
Analytical Engine
Analytical Engine: Charles Babbage never completed it, so the Bernoulli-number program in her notes had no machine to run on.
Q 21Which ancient people counted in base 60, still used for measuring time?
Babylonians
Babylonians: because 60 divides evenly by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, fractions such as a third, which never end in base 10, come out exact in base 60.
Q 22Goldbach's conjecture, unproven as of 2025, says every even number greater than 2 is the sum of two of what?
Prime numbers
Prime numbers: in 2000 the publisher Faber and Faber offered a $1 million prize for a proof within two years, but no one claimed it.
Q 23Mathematician Charles Dodgson wrote as whom?
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll: he made up stories for the three young Liddell sisters, and in 1862 Alice asked him to write one down, which grew into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Q 14A topologist famously can't tell a coffee mug from which food?
A doughnut
A doughnut: a soft clay doughnut could be reshaped into a mug without tearing, its hole becoming the handle, so topology counts them as the same shape.
Q 15Euclid, the "father of geometry", is chiefly known for which treatise?
Elements
Elements: Euclid gathered earlier Greek results into one ordered chain of proofs, and it stayed at the centre of mathematics teaching for 2,000 years.
Q 16Which mathematician did his contemporaries dub the 'Prince of Mathematicians'?
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauss: as a schoolboy he is said to have added up 1 to 100 in moments by pairing the numbers into 50 pairs of 101.
Q 17Hypatia, the celebrated ancient philosopher and mathematician, lived and taught in which city?
Alexandria
Alexandria: she advised the Roman prefect there in his bitter feud with the city's bishop, Cyril, and in 415 Christian zealots murdered her.
Q 181729 is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two of what, in two different ways?
Cubes
Cubes: when G. H. Hardy called his taxi's number, 1729, rather dull, Ramanujan replied that it was a very interesting number, for exactly this reason.
Q 19Katherine Johnson, whose calculations were critical to early US crewed spaceflights, worked for which organisation?
NASA
NASA: before his 1962 orbital flight, John Glenn asked engineers to 'get the girl' to check the computer's calculations by hand.
Q 20Which paper size's sides are in the ratio 1 to √2?
A4
A4: with that ratio, cutting a sheet in half gives two sheets of the same shape, so a copier can shrink two A4 pages onto one.
Q 24Which mathematician first used the notation f(x) for the value of a function?
Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler: going almost totally blind barely slowed him, and with scribes to take dictation, he kept turning out papers.
Q 25Which Newton book set out his three laws of motion?
Principia
Principia: the Royal Society was broke, so the astronomer who had urged Newton to write it paid for the printing out of his own pocket.
Q 26Albert Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for which discovery?
The photoelectric effect
The photoelectric effect: he explained why light below a certain frequency frees no electrons from a metal, however brightly it shines.
Q 27Who was the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice?
Marie Curie
Marie Curie: when Pierre Curie died in 1906, she took over his professorship in Paris, the first woman ever to hold the post.
Q 28Which element did an alchemist first isolate by boiling down urine?
Phosphorus
Phosphorus: the alchemist was seeking the philosopher's stone, and the substance he made glowed in the dark, so its name comes from the Greek for 'light-bearer'.
Q 29Which is the lightest and most abundant chemical element in the universe?
Hydrogen
Hydrogen: stars like the Sun shine by fusing it into heavier atoms, and that fusion powers all of the Sun's heat and light.
Q 30Which element has the chemical symbol Au?
Gold
Gold: its symbol comes from the Latin aurum, and because gold doesn't corrode, it is used to coat the electrical connectors inside computers and other electronics.