Meitnerium
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40 free Meitnerium trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Meitnerium is among the rarest things humans have ever made. Element 109 does not occur naturally, has never been seen with the naked eye, and disappears almost as soon as it forms, yet it carries a name with a remarkable story behind it. This quiz gathers the best meitnerium fun facts into questions: how and where the element was first created, what scientists predict about a substance nobody has been able to test, and where it sits among its neighbours on the periodic table. Many questions follow Lise Meitner, the physicist it honours, from her student days to her escape from Nazi Germany and the discovery that made her famous. The questions start easy and get harder, so they suit curious beginners, chemistry students revising the elements and quiz fans looking for stories worth retelling. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938, meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner was handed which heirloom by Otto Hahn for emergencies?
A diamond ring
A diamond ring inherited from Otto Hahn's mother went with her in case of emergency. Apart from that she crossed the border with just 10 marks in her purse.
Q 02How many atoms of meitnerium did its German discoverers detect in the experiment that first created the element?
Just one
Just one atom appeared after a week of bombardment, yet that lone sighting was enough to claim a new element. By 1997 the same laboratory had added only 14 more.
Q 03Lise Meitner, the physicist honoured by meitnerium, was nominated 49 times for which honour without ever winning it?
The Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize for the discovery she helped explain went to Otto Hahn alone in 1944. Her 49 nominations were split between chemistry, with 19, and physics, with 30.
Q 04Meitnerium is the only element named solely after a real woman, because which element honours a married couple instead?
Curium
Curium honours Marie Curie together with her husband, so she shares the credit. That leaves Lise Meitner as the only real woman with an element to herself.
Q 05Even the longest-lived confirmed form of meitnerium, known as meitnerium-278, lasts roughly how long before it decays?
A few seconds
A few seconds is the best it manages before half of any sample has vanished. The very first atom of the element, a lighter form, lasted about five milliseconds.
Q 06Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, helped explain how atoms split but refused a wartime invitation to do what?
Work on the atomic bomb
Work on the atomic bomb was something she flatly refused, turning down a place at Los Alamos. She later said the attack on Hiroshima had come as a surprise to her.
Q 07Meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner worked out how uranium atoms split on a woodland walk over which holiday?
Christmas
Christmas 1938 found her as a refugee guest in the small town of Kungälv, where the physicist Otto Frisch joined her. He wore skis on the walk; she kept pace on foot.
Q 08Meitnerium was first made by bombarding a target of which heavy metal, also found in pink stomach remedies?
Bismuth
Bismuth is the metal in Pepto-Bismol, and here it served as the target. Each of its atoms holds 83 protons, and the 26 carried by an incoming projectile brought the total to 109.
Q 09The headstone of Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, describes her as a physicist who never lost what?
Her humanity
Her humanity is what the inscription honours, in words composed by the physicist Otto Frisch. She lies in the churchyard at Bramley, an English village, near her younger brother.
Q 10Which two-letter symbol does meitnerium, element 109, carry in its box on the periodic table?
Mt
Mt became the official symbol in 1997, when the name was finally approved. Until then, periodic tables printed the three-letter placeholder Une in the same box.
Q 11Meitnerium honours Lise Meitner, who helped discover which process now harnessed in reactors that power whole cities?
Nuclear fission
Nuclear fission, the splitting of a heavy atom into two lighter ones, was first explained by her in early 1939. She and Otto Frisch showed that each split frees enormous energy.
Q 12Meitnerium was first created at a heavy-ion laboratory near which German city in the Frankfurt region?
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is home to the GSI laboratory, where six new elements were first made between 1981 and 1996. One of the six now carries the city's own name.
Q 13To make meitnerium, scientists fired nuclei of which everyday metal at a heavy target?
Iron
Q 21Meitnerium is placed in which broad family of elements, alongside gold, silver, copper and platinum?
Transition metals
Transition metals fill the wide middle block of the table, and meitnerium is the seventh member of their fourth and heaviest row. No experiment has yet confirmed it behaves like one.
Q 22The German laboratory that made meitnerium also created which element, number 108, named after its home state?
Hassium
Hassium takes its name from Hassia, the Latin for the state of Hesse. A rival plan would have called element 108 hahnium instead, after Lise Meitner's research partner Otto Hahn.
Q 23Otto Frisch, who helped Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, explain the splitting atom, was related to her how?
Her nephew
Iron supplied the projectiles, in the scarce form iron-58, which makes up only about 0.3 percent of the natural metal. Each nucleus carried 26 protons to add to the target's 83.
Q 14Meitnerium has never been found naturally on Earth, so where has every known atom of the element been produced?
In an accelerator
In an accelerator is the only place it has ever been made: heavy nuclei are smashed together until two fuse. Its heavier forms appear only as fragments when even heavier man-made elements decay.
Q 15Which metal, famous for a deep blue pigment, heads the periodic-table column that ends with meitnerium?
Cobalt
Cobalt heads group 9, and its compounds have tinted glass and ceramics blue for centuries. Meitnerium is expected to behave like its lighter relatives, though nobody has tested it.
Q 16Meitnerium sits directly below which rare metal, whose traces in ancient clay reveal a dinosaur-killing asteroid?
Iridium
Iridium is its nearest relative, so the unmade element was once nicknamed eka-iridium, meaning one place beyond it. The two are predicted to share a crystal structure.
Q 17Which famous equation let Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, calculate the energy freed when a uranium atom splits?
E = mc²
E = mc² turned a tiny loss of mass, about a fifth of a proton, into some 200 million electron volts for every atom split. She did the sums on scraps of paper in the woods.
Q 18Lise Meitner, the physicist honoured by meitnerium, served the Austrian army in World War I in which role?
An X-ray nurse
An X-ray nurse and technician is what she became in 1915, after a hospital course in anatomy. Her unit was sent to the Eastern front in Poland, and she later served on the Italian front.
Q 19After escaping Nazi Germany, meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner settled in which country, becoming a citizen in 1949?
Sweden
Sweden gave her a research post in Stockholm in 1938 and citizenship in 1949. Its parliament passed a special act so that she could keep her Austrian nationality too.
Q 20Before meitnerium was named, chemists called it unnilennium, a placeholder whose Latin and Greek roots mean what?
One-zero-nine
One-zero-nine is all it says: un, nil and enn are the roots for the digits 1, 0 and 9. The scheme gave every unnamed element a stopgap name built from its number.
Her nephew was the son of her sister Auguste, a concert pianist. He went on to join the wartime weapons project at Los Alamos.
Q 24Meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner helped explain atom splitting, a process given a name borrowed from which science?
Biology
Biology supplied the word: Otto Frisch borrowed the term for a living cell dividing in two and applied it to the atom. The name first appeared in print in February 1939.
Q 25Which quantum pioneer, once opposed to women at universities, made meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner his assistant?
Max Planck
Max Planck appointed her his assistant, her first paid post, and she marked his students' papers. She was the first woman to hold such a position in Prussia.
Q 26Meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner also has a crater on which world, where nearly every feature bears a woman's name?
Venus
Venus has a crater called Meitner, and all but three of its features honour women, real or mythical. She also has a crater on the far side of the Moon and an asteroid, 6999 Meitner.
Q 27The German laboratory that created meitnerium also developed beams of carbon ions as a treatment for which disease?
Cancer
Cancer patients were first treated there in 1997, because carbon ions dump most of their energy at a precise depth. That lets doctors reach tumours close to vital organs.
Q 28Which international body, the final authority on element names, officially approved the name meitnerium?
IUPAC
IUPAC, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, adopted the name in 1997 without a fight. Meitnerium was the only proposal for element 109, unlike its much-disputed neighbours.
Q 29Lise Meitner, namesake of meitnerium, and Otto Hahn discovered which radioactive element, number 91, during World War I?
Protactinium
Protactinium means the forerunner of actinium, the element it decays into. The pair identified it in 1917 and 1918, and their claim to the discovery was formally confirmed in 1949.
Q 30Which far lighter element, found by Otto Hahn in bombarded uranium, did meitnerium's namesake Lise Meitner explain?
Barium
Barium is about 40 percent lighter than uranium, which no known decay could explain until she saw that the nucleus had split in two. The other fragment proved to be krypton.