Metals
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50 free Metals trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Metals built the modern world long before anyone understood what they were. Whole ages of human history are named after them, fortunes were made and lost at the mines, and a few are now so ordinary that we drop them in the recycling without a second thought. This quiz covers the metals and alloys most people have met: the elements and their odd chemical symbols, the record holders for density, melting point and reactivity, the ores they come from and the furnace-and-anvil crafts that shape them. You will also meet the people who first isolated them and some metals that turn up in unexpected places, from medicine cabinets to museum walls. It suits chemistry students revising the periodic table, quiz hosts after a science round, and anyone who has wondered what their kitchen foil, coins or jewelry are really made of. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which everyday metal was still a costly rarity in 1884, when it capped the Washington Monument?
Aluminum
Aluminum cost about as much as a precious metal when the monument's tip was cast. Two years later a new electrical process made it far easier to produce, and the price collapsed.
Q 02First-place medals at the Olympic Games must be made of at least 92.5 percent which metal?
Silver
Silver makes up nearly all of an Olympic champion's medal, which carries just six grams of plating in the metal it is named for. Solid versions were last awarded in 1912.
Q 03Which metal forms the thin skin of the Statue of Liberty, which was a shiny reddish-brown when new?
Copper
Copper sheets were hammered into shape for the statue, and within about twenty years the air had turned them green. That crust, called verdigris, now protects the metal beneath it.
Q 04Which metal, long used in thermometers and barometers, is the only one liquid at room temperature?
Mercury
Mercury is also known as quicksilver for the way it runs and shines, and its symbol, Hg, comes from the Latin hydrargyrum. Many countries have banned it from thermometers because it is toxic.
Q 05Which soft, heavy metal, used for ancient Rome's water pipes, gave English the word plumbing?
Lead
Lead was plumbum to the Romans, whose pipes were made of it, and the same Latin word explains its chemical symbol, Pb.
Q 06Which metal, the one with the highest melting point, glows as the filament in old-style light bulbs?
Tungsten
Tungsten melts only at 3,422 degrees Celsius, so a thin wire of it can glow white-hot without failing. Its symbol, W, comes from wolfram, the name it goes by in much of Europe.
Q 07Which metal, the least dense of all, powers the rechargeable batteries in phones and electric cars?
Lithium
Lithium is one of only three metals light enough to float on water, and it is so reactive that it has to be stored under oil or in a vacuum.
Q 08Which metal coats the James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors because it reflects infrared so well?
Gold
Gold forms only a thin film on Webb's 18 hexagonal mirror segments, which are made of a much lighter metal and sealed under a layer of glass.
Q 09Which metal, the most common element on Earth by mass, lets the hemoglobin in blood carry oxygen?
Iron
Iron forms much of Earth's inner and outer core, yet an adult's body holds only about four grams of it, mostly in the blood.
Q 10Which alloy, the favorite for cast statues, swells slightly as it sets to fill a mold's details?
Bronze
Bronze was the hardest metal in common use for so long that a whole age of prehistory, the one after the Stone Age, carries its name.
Q 11Which strong, light metal clads Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum and is used in bone and dental implants?
Titanium
Titanium has the highest strength-to-density ratio of any metallic element, and it is one of the metals the human body tolerates best.
Q 12Which metal, locked up in the world's limestone, is also the most abundant metal in the human body?
Calcium
Calcium sits almost entirely in the skeleton, which holds roughly 99 percent of the body's supply. In pure form it is a silvery metal that reacts quickly with air.
Q 13Which metal coats galvanized steel against rust and forms the core of US pennies struck after 1982?
Zinc
Zinc plating is called galvanization in honor of the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani, and protecting steel this way is the metal's biggest single use.
Q 21Which metal makes up most of pewter and gives a crackling 'cry' when a bar of it is bent?
Tin
Tin is also the thin coating on steel food cans, where its low toxicity makes it safe beside what we eat.
Q 22Which metal, making up at least a tenth of the mix, is what makes stainless steel stainless?
Chromium
Chromium, the metal behind the shine of chrome car trim, forms an invisible film on the steel that blocks rust and can heal itself when scratched.
Q 23Which dense precious metal made up 90 percent of the cylinder that defined the kilogram until 2019?
Platinum
Platinum resists tarnish and is more than 21 times as dense as water, so the cylinder kept in a vault near Paris was only about the size of a golf ball.
Q 14Which alloy, long used for doorknobs, kills many microbes on its surface within hours of contact?
Brass
Brass, the metal of trumpets and trombones, can kill microbes within minutes to hours of contact, even antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA.
Q 15Which metal, named in 1789 after a newly found planet, is the main fuel of nuclear power plants?
Uranium
Uranium honors Uranus, which William Herschel had discovered only eight years before the German chemist Martin Klaproth identified the new element.
Q 16Which metal, soft enough to cut with a knife, gives many street lamps their yellow-orange glow?
Sodium
Sodium lamps give light of almost a single yellow-orange color, which makes them highly efficient but leaves people unable to tell colors apart beneath them.
Q 17Which non-metal element, usually under two percent of the mix, gives steel its hardness?
Carbon
Carbon hardens the metal in small doses, but go much beyond two percent and the result is no longer steel but a casting alloy that tends to be brittle.
Q 18Which light metal burns with a brilliant white glare and was the flash powder of early photography?
Magnesium
Magnesium is still packed into fireworks and marine flares for the same dazzling light, and even into trick birthday candles that relight themselves.
Q 19Which metal, vital to nerve signals and plentiful in bananas, has the chemical symbol K?
Potassium
Potassium owes its K to kalium, a Latin-style name proposed soon after its discovery, while its English name comes from potash, the plant ashes it was first isolated from.
Q 20Which metal discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie was once painted on watch dials to make them glow?
Radium
Radium paint poisoned the factory workers who applied it, known as the Radium Girls, who had been told to point their brushes with their lips.
Q 24Which process uses heat and a reducing agent such as charcoal to extract a metal from its ore?
Smelting
Smelting is more than melting: the reducing agent strips away the elements bound to the metal, driving them off as gas or waste and leaving the metal behind.
Q 25Which property, distinct from being hammered flat, lets a metal be drawn out into a long, thin wire?
Ductility
Ductility is why metals can be pulled through dies into cables; a material that cracks or shatters under that stress cannot be shaped this way.
Q 26Which fusible alloy is melted to bond wires and components permanently onto printed circuit boards?
Solder
Solder works because it melts at a far lower temperature than the parts it joins; one classic electronics blend turns liquid at just 183 degrees Celsius.
Q 27Which metal sits at the center of every vitamin B12 molecule and tints glass a deep blue?
Cobalt
Cobalt takes its name from kobold, a goblin of German folklore: silver miners used the word for ores laced with arsenic that spoiled their smelting and made them ill.
Q 28Which metal, used in blue LEDs, has a melting point so low that a lump turns liquid in your hand?
Gallium
Gallium melts at just under 30 degrees Celsius, and Dmitri Mendeleev predicted its existence and several of its properties in 1871, before anyone had found it.
Q 29Which soft, reactive family sits below hydrogen in the first column of the periodic table?
Alkali metals
Alkali metals all react with water, the heavier ones more vigorously than the lighter, and they take their name from the strong alkalis they form when they do.
Q 30What name is given to the official mark stamped on precious-metal items to certify their purity?
Hallmark
Hallmark comes from Goldsmiths' Hall in London, the guild headquarters where an assay office was set up in 1478 to test and stamp precious wares.