Niobium
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40 free Niobium trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Niobium is the element with an identity problem. It was discovered once, lost in an argument over whether it was really its sister metal tantalum, found again under a new name, and then known by two names on two sides of the Atlantic for a hundred years. This quiz gathers the fun and interesting facts about niobium that people go looking for: the grieving queen of Greek myth it is named after, the tiny pinch of it that toughens bridges and pipelines, and the superconducting wire that makes giant magnets possible. There are weird ones too, from rocket nozzles and rainbow-coloured jewellery to coins with a coloured centre. It suits chemistry students revising element 41, quiz writers after something fresher than the usual metals, and anyone who enjoys a science surprise. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country supplies the vast majority of the world's niobium, mostly from a single mine?
Brazil
Brazil dominates through a single company, CBMM, which mines and refines the metal at Araxá. That one deposit could meet world demand for at least 200 years.
Q 02Superconducting niobium-titanium wire is at the heart of which hospital imaging machines?
MRI scanners
MRI scanners are the main commercial use of superconductors, and most of them rely on niobium-titanium coils. Chilled close to absolute zero, the wire carries huge currents with no resistance.
Q 03Which particle accelerator holds about 1,200 tonnes of niobium-titanium cable in its superconducting magnets?
Large Hadron Collider
Large Hadron Collider magnets are chilled to 1.9 kelvin, barely above absolute zero, so the cable loses all electrical resistance. Only then can it carry the currents that bend the proton beams.
Q 04Niobium-titanium magnets ride aboard which country's SCMaglev trains, one of which reached 603 km/h?
Japan
Japan developed the SCMaglev, whose onboard niobium-titanium coils lift the train clear of its guideway. A seven-car set reached that speed in April 2015, a record for rail vehicles.
Q 05The Merlin Vacuum's huge nozzle, made from a niobium alloy, flies on which company's rockets?
SpaceX
SpaceX fits the nozzle to the upper stage of its Falcon 9. It is cooled only by radiating its heat away, a job suited to niobium, which melts at about 2,470 °C.
Q 06Niobium's first commercial use, in the early 1900s, was as the glowing filament inside which household item?
Light bulbs
Light bulbs with niobium filaments had a short career. Tungsten, which melts at a far higher temperature, soon pushed niobium out of the job.
Q 07Niobium jewellery is sold as a safe choice for people whose skin reacts to which common metal?
Nickel
Nickel is the usual culprit behind jewellery rashes, and pure niobium needs none of it. Niobium oxidises so slowly in air that it stays inert against the skin.
Q 08The discoverer of niobium, a London coachbuilder's son, delivered a coach in 1790 to which Russian ruler?
Catherine the Great
Catherine the Great took delivery in St Petersburg, and the young chemist used the trip to meet leading scientists. He later gave up chemistry to run the family coach business.
Q 09Niobium was first named columbium after Columbia, a poetic name for which country?
United States
The United States earned the tribute because the ore came from Connecticut, sent to London decades earlier by a colonial governor's grandson. Chemists then argued over the name for a century.
Q 10Most of the world's niobium is used in tiny amounts, often under 0.1%, to strengthen which material?
Steel
Steel made with a pinch of niobium is stronger and tougher, which is why it goes into car bodies and gas pipelines. The effect was discovered in the 1920s and remains the metal's main use.
Q 11Most niobium is sold as an alloy that is 60 to 70% niobium and the rest mainly which metal?
Iron
Iron makes up most of the rest, and the alloy is called ferroniobium. Producers make it in a fierce thermite-style reaction, ready to be added to a furnace of molten metal.
Q 12A niobium alloy formed the big rocket nozzle on the service module of which NASA spacecraft programme?
Apollo
Apollo's service module engine braked the crew into lunar orbit and later fired to send them home. Its nozzle needed a protective coating, because hot niobium reacts with oxygen and turns brittle.
Q 13Niobium makes up about 5% of Inconel 718, a superalloy that keeps its strength in the heat of which machines?
Jet engines
Q 21A 'weeping rock' said to be Niobe, the queen behind niobium's name, stands near Manisa in which country?
Turkey
Turkey is home to the rock, a limestone face that seeps rainwater like tears. In the Greek myth, Niobe wept for her slain children until she was turned to stone.
Q 22Which country's mint has issued silver-ringed euro coins with a brightly coloured niobium centre since 2003?
Austria
Austria colours each coin without paint or dye: a thin oxide film on the niobium plays tricks with light to produce one vivid shade. Later issues in the series used different colours.
Q 23Niobium seals the ceramic arc tubes of high-pressure street lamps whose glow comes from which metal's vapour?
Sodium
Jet engines run so hot that ordinary alloys would weaken, and niobium forms tiny hardening particles that hold the metal firm. The same superalloys go into rocket parts and gas turbines.
Q 14Niobium shrugs off aqua regia, the acid mixture named for its power to dissolve which precious metal?
Gold
Gold dissolves in aqua regia, the 'royal water' of the alchemists, yet niobium sits in it unharmed. Chemical plants take advantage by lining their vats with niobium.
Q 15Superconducting niobium-tin magnets usually run at 4.2 kelvin, the boiling point of which coolant?
Liquid helium
Liquid helium boils just 4.2 degrees above absolute zero. Pure niobium needs that kind of cold too: it turns superconducting at 9.2 kelvin, the highest of any pure element at normal pressure.
Q 16Lithium niobate, a compound of niobium, is used extensively inside which everyday devices?
Mobile phones
Mobile phones use lithium niobate chips that turn radio signals into tiny sound waves rippling across the crystal, which strips out unwanted frequencies. The same crystal modulates light in optical equipment.
Q 17Niobium added to glass raises its refractive index, allowing thinner, lighter versions of which everyday item?
Eyeglass lenses
Eyeglass lenses made with niobium bend light more sharply, so a strong prescription needs less glass. The metal is added to the glass in the form of its oxide.
Q 18Which two-letter chemical symbol did niobium carry for decades under its older name, columbium?
Cb
Cb lingered in chemistry journals into the 1950s, about a century after the rival name niobium was coined. The two names were used side by side for all that time.
Q 19Niobium can stand in for its scarcer sister metal tantalum in which tiny components found on most circuit boards?
Capacitors
Capacitors made with niobium compete with tantalum ones because niobium is cheaper and easier to obtain. In both, an ultra-thin oxide layer grown on the metal does the insulating.
Q 20Niobium wire carries high voltage aboard which NASA spacecraft, built to fly through the Sun's outer atmosphere?
Parker Solar Probe
Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, became the first spacecraft to fly into the Sun's corona. Niobium wire feeds the detector that samples the particles streaming past it.
Sodium vapour runs hot inside these lamps, and niobium expands with heat at almost the same rate as the ceramic tube. That match keeps the seal tight every time the lamp warms up.
Q 24Which element, best known from imitation diamonds, sits one place before niobium in the periodic table?
Zirconium
Zirconium is element 40, one step before niobium at 41. Its oxide, cubic zirconia, has been the leading stand-in for diamond since the 1970s.
Q 25Niobium and tantalum both come from which dull black ore, widely mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
Coltan
Coltan is short for columbite-tantalite, the two minerals it blends. The columbite half is the one rich in niobium, and it keeps the metal's discarded older name alive.
Q 26Niobium jewellery gets its rainbow colours without dye or paint, through which electrical surface treatment?
Anodizing
Anodizing grows a transparent oxide film on the metal, and the film's thickness decides which colour it shows. Titanium and tantalum can be coloured the same way.
Q 27The 1949 deal that made niobium's name official also kept 'tungsten' over which rival name, still used in German?
Wolfram
Wolfram lost out in English but lives on in the symbol W. The deal was a trade: one name went the way North American chemists wanted, the other the way Europeans wanted.
Q 28The mineral specimen in which niobium was discovered in 1801 sat in the collection of which London institution?
British Museum
British Museum drawers had held the dark, heavy stone for decades before anyone analysed it. Its discoverer had sold the museum his own collection of 7,000 minerals two years earlier.
Q 29Which metal, named after a Norse goddess of beauty, sits directly above niobium in the periodic table?
Vanadium
Vanadium heads group 5, the column that runs down through niobium and tantalum. It honours Vanadís, another name for the goddess Freyja, because its compounds come in so many colours.
Q 30Hundreds of tonnes of niobium-tin strands go into the magnets of which fusion reactor in southern France?
ITER
ITER uses niobium-tin in its most powerful magnets, and making the strand took nine suppliers seven years. World output of the material had to grow more than sixfold to meet the order.