50 free Nylon trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This nylon trivia quiz covers the first commercially successful synthetic thermoplastic and the strange, sad story of the man who made it. It starts in DuPont's Experimental Station: Wallace Carothers hired away from Harvard in 1927, the neoprene detour, the cold-drawing trick, the first strand of nylon 66 pulled on February 28, 1935, and the suicide sixteen months before the world heard the word 'nylon'. It covers where that word came from (and where it did not), the toothbrush that used it first, the 4,000 pairs of stockings that sold in three hours in Wilmington, and the 64 million pairs sold in the first year. The second half moves through the wartime parachutes and black-market stockings, the 40,000 women who queued in Pittsburgh during the nylon riots, the cadaverine rumour, the blends that fixed nylon's itchy, static-charged flaws, Chanel and Dior showing DuPont fabrics, the nylon flag planted on the Moon, and the chemistry: what the numbers in nylon 6 and 66 mean, why nylon salt is made, and how the melting points differ. It finishes with tyres, Glock frames, oven bags, 3D-printer filament and carpets. Questions range from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia articles on nylon, Wallace Carothers and the nylon riots.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which chemist synthesised the first nylon, nylon 66, at DuPont on February 28, 1935?
Wallace Carothers
He had been hired from Harvard in 1928 to run DuPont's pure-research polymer group; his team had already made neoprene in 1930.
Q 02Which earlier cellulose-based DuPont fibre was an important precursor to nylon?
Rayon
DuPont's experience with rayon fed directly into how it developed and marketed nylon over an eleven-year programme from 1927 to 1938.
Q 03Which milestone does Wikipedia credit nylon with?
Being the first commercially successful synthetic thermoplastic
DuPont's earlier work on the cellulose-based fibre rayon was an important precursor.
Q 04What was the first commercial product to use nylon, in 1938?
Toothbrush bristles
Stockings followed the next year at the New York World's Fair and sold 64 million pairs in their first year on the market.
Q 05How many pairs of nylon stockings were sold in their first year on the market?
64 million
They cost about one and a half times as much as silk, but rising hemlines created demand for stockings that stayed up without garters.
Q 06Where and when did the first public sale of nylon stockings take place?
Wilmington, Delaware, on October 24, 1939
All 4,000 pairs sold within three hours; the national release to selected stores came on May 15, 1940.
Q 07According to DuPont's own 1978 account, the name 'nylon' was originally intended to be what?
No-Run
Since stockings were not truly run-proof, the vowels were swapped to 'nuron', then 'nilon' to sound less like a nerve tonic, then 'nylon' for pronunciation.
Q 08Which persistent urban legend about the origin of the name 'nylon' does Wikipedia reject?
That it combines 'New York' and 'London'
No organisation in London was ever involved in the research or production of nylon.
Q 09From what three raw materials did DuPont's marketing say nylon was made?
Coal, air and water
The company retreated from claims that nylon was 'as strong as steel' and would never run, and instead sold it as pretty and quick-drying.
Q 10A damaging news story suggested nylon might be made from which chemical extracted from corpses?
Cadaverine
Scientists pointed out that cadaverine can also be obtained by heating coal, but one woman confronted a DuPont scientist and refused to believe it.
Q 11On what date was nylon publicly announced, at the Herald Tribune's 'Forum on Current Problems'?
October 27, 1938
It was billed as 'the first man-made organic textile fibre', 'as strong as steel, as fine as the spider's web', to an audience largely of middle-class women.
Q 12Where was DuPont's first nylon plant, which began commercial production on December 15, 1939?
Seaford, Delaware
It provided 1,800 jobs and was named a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 1995; a second plant opened in Martinsville in 1941.
Q 13How did the wartime move to nylon help the US politically, according to DuPont's pitch?
Q 21How long before nylon's public announcement did Carothers die?
Sixteen months
He felt he had accomplished little and run out of ideas, despite becoming the first industrial organic chemist elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Q 22What other famous polymer did Carothers' team synthesise in spring 1930, before nylon?
Neoprene
The synthetic rubber was widely used in World War II; the second discovery that spring was an elastic paste that later became nylon.
Q 23Which technique, first used by Julian Hill on a polyester in 1930, did Carothers apply to develop nylon?
Cold drawing
Hill was a Washington University alumnus and Carothers' co-worker; DuPont patented the polymer in September 1938.
It reduced silk imports from Japan
Roosevelt's cabinet discussed nylon's 'vast and interesting economic possibilities' five days after the announcement.
Q 14From February 11, 1942, most nylon production went to the military for what?
Parachutes and tents
Pre-war stockings changed hands on the black market for as much as $20 a pair.
Q 15In one of the worst 'nylon riots' of 1945-46, how many women queued in Pittsburgh, and for how much stock?
About 40,000 for 13,000 pairs
DuPont had promised 360 million pairs a year but could not convert back from wartime production fast enough; fights broke out.
Q 16What did women do with surplus wartime nylon military gear when stockings were scarce?
Cut it up for blouses and wedding dresses
Between the war's end and 1952, stockings and lingerie consumed 80% of the world's nylon.
Q 17How did women fake stockings during the wartime shortage?
By painting seam lines down their legs
Lotions, creams and spray-on 'liquid hosiery' were also used; one Louisiana home was robbed of 18 pairs of nylons.
Q 18What was the model who wore nylon stockings at the 1939 World's Fair called?
Miss Chemistry
Up to 4 million pairs were bought in a single day once the product caught on.
Q 19Which Fats Waller song described the wartime stocking shortage?
When the Nylons Bloom Again
George Marion Jr. wrote the words, which look forward to 'a world that Mr. Wallace planned'.
Q 20How did nylon's inventor die in April 1937?
Suicide by cyanide
He was found in a Philadelphia hotel room with a squeezed lemon and cyanide salt; his daughter Jane was born seven months later.
Q 24Which German chemist at IG Farben developed nylon 6, based on caprolactam, in January 1938?
Paul Schlack
Nylon 6 melts at 220 C, lower than nylon 66's 265 C, and is made by ring-opening polymerisation.
Q 25What was Carothers' monthly salary at DuPont, compared with $267 at Harvard?
$500
He first refused the job, warning that he suffered 'neurotic spells of diminished capacity', until executive Hamilton Bradshaw travelled to Harvard to persuade him.
Q 26What was the name of the Wilmington house Carothers shared with three other DuPont scientists from 1931?
Whiskey Acres
He was no recluse, but his depressive moods often kept him from joining his housemates' activities.
Q 27What type of chemical linkage defines nylons?
Amide linkages
That is why 'PA', for polyamide, is used interchangeably with 'nylon'.
Q 28In the name nylon 6,6, what do the two numbers refer to?
The carbon chain lengths of the diamine and the dicarboxylic acid
Nylon 66 is made from hexamethylenediamine and adipic acid; a single number, as in nylon 6, means one amino-acid-type monomer.
Q 29Why is a crystalline 'nylon salt' made before polymerising nylon 66?
To get an exact 1:1 ratio of acid and diamine
Wrong proportions terminate the chains below the desired 10,000 daltons; the salt is then heated to 285 C to form the polymer.
Q 30What is the melting point of nylon 66?
265 C (509 F)
Nylon 6 melts at 220 C; copolymers lower crystallinity and melt lower still.