Plastic
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50 free Plastic trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Plastic is little more than a century and a half old, yet it is in almost everything we touch. Its story is full of happy accidents: failed experiments that became household names, a prize that set an inventor on a new path, and laboratory mishaps that ended up in every kitchen. This quiz starts with the basics: what plastics are made from, how chemists build them, and why some can be melted again while others cannot. It then moves through the inventors and the famous brand names, and on to the environmental side, with the bans, the wildlife and the remote places where plastic waste turns up. The questions suit a classroom lesson on materials, a Plastic Free July or Earth Day event, or anyone who wants a general knowledge round with a science flavour. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Galalith, an early plastic adopted by the fashion industry, was made from a protein in which food?
Milk
Milk supplied the casein that formaldehyde turned as hard as horn, and the trade name comes from the Greek for milk stone. In 1913 Germany alone used thirty million litres of it this way.
Q 02Bubble wrap was invented in 1957 by two men who were trying to create a textured plastic version of what?
Wallpaper
Wallpaper was what Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes had in mind. Their flop found its calling as padding for IBM's new 1401 computers on the way to customers.
Q 03John Wesley Hyatt's 1860s plastic came from chasing a $10,000 prize for an ivory substitute in what?
Billiard balls
Billiard balls were using up so much ivory that Michael Phelan put up the reward in 1863. Hyatt's company went on to turn out false teeth and piano keys as well.
Q 04Which country issued the world's first modern plastic banknotes in 1988, the year of its bicentenary?
Australia
Australia developed the notes with its national science agency, CSIRO, and by 1996 had given up paper money altogether. Romania became the first European country to follow, in 1999.
Q 05Which country became the first to ban thin plastic bags, in 2002, after they were blamed for floods?
Bangladesh
Bangladesh acted after littered bags were blamed for floods that submerged two-thirds of the country between 1988 and 1998.
Q 06Which everyday treat is usually built on a base of synthetic rubbers and plastics such as polyvinyl acetate?
Chewing gum
Chewing gum was traditionally made from chicle, a natural tree latex. Makers moved to synthetic gum bases when chicle could no longer meet their needs.
Q 07Sea turtles often swallow drifting plastic bags because they mistake them for which of their natural prey?
Jellyfish
Jellyfish make up almost the whole diet of the leatherback turtle, so a bag drifting in the water looks like a meal.
Q 08Which plastic toy craze of 1958, sold by Wham-O, gave Phillips Petroleum a market for its new Marlex?
Hula hoop
Hula hoop sales gave Phillips Petroleum a market for a tough plastic that two of its chemists, Paul Hogan and Robert Banks, had invented in 1951.
Q 09The Bank of England's first plastic banknote, the 2016 £5, drew protests because it contained traces of what?
Animal fat
Animal fat, in the form of tallow, turned up in the new notes and angered vegans and several religious groups. In 2017 the Bank announced that future notes would keep using it.
Q 10At a bottle-recycling site in Sakai, Japan, scientists discovered which kind of organism feeding on plastic?
A bacterium
A bacterium, named Ideonella sakaiensis after the city, can break down the plastic of drinks bottles and live on what is left. It was isolated from a community of microbes at the site.
Q 11Which plastic, developed in New York in 1907 and used for early telephones, was the first fully synthetic one?
Bakelite
Bakelite resists heat and does not conduct electricity, which made it the natural choice for radio casings and light-bulb sockets. Leo Baekeland made it from phenol and formaldehyde.
Q 12Which DuPont material, first sold in a toothbrush in 1938, became a sensation in women's stockings two years later?
Nylon
Nylon stockings sold 64 million pairs in their first year on the market. During World War II almost all production was diverted to the military for parachutes and cord.
Q 13Which slippery plastic, discovered by accident in 1938 by chemist Roy Plunkett, went on to coat frying pans?
Teflon
Q 21Which chemical element forms the backbone of the long chain molecules in almost every plastic?
Carbon
Carbon atoms link into the long chains, and the side groups hanging from them give each plastic its character. Silicones are the odd ones out, with backbones of silicon and oxygen.
Q 22Which name do chemists give the small molecules that link by the thousand into the long chains of a plastic?
Monomers
Monomers can be toxic even when the finished plastic made from them is harmless. Almost all of them start out as petrochemicals.
Q 23More than half the weight of PVC plastic is chlorine, which industry extracts from which everyday substance?
Salt
Salt dissolved as brine is split by electricity to release the chlorine, which makes up about 57 per cent of PVC. The same chlorine makes PVC-coated wires slow to burn.
Teflon had a secret first job in the Manhattan Project, coating valves and seals in pipes that carried highly reactive uranium hexafluoride at the Oak Ridge enrichment plant.
Q 14Which fibre, developed by chemist Stephanie Kwolek in 1965, is five times stronger than steel for its weight?
Kevlar
Kevlar was first sold in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tyres. Kwolek's group had set out to find a light, strong fibre for tyres, and bulletproof vests followed.
Q 15Which transparent wrapping film was invented by a Swiss chemist inspired by wine spilled on a restaurant tablecloth?
Cellophane
Cellophane is made from plant cellulose rather than oil, and its name blends cellulose with diaphane, meaning transparent. Jacques Brandenberger had built a machine to make it by 1912.
Q 16Which clear plastic, sold as Plexiglas and Perspex, formed the aircraft canopies and gun turrets of World War II?
Acrylic
Acrylic was first brought to market in 1933 by the German firm Röhm & Haas. Both sides in the war also used it for submarine periscopes.
Q 17Which tough transparent plastic is used to make compact discs, riot shields and bullet-resistant windows?
Polycarbonate
Polycarbonate scratches easily, so spectacle lenses and car headlamp covers made from it are given a hard coating. It is also moulded into swimming goggles and police helmet visors.
Q 18Which plastic is expanded into the lightweight white foam used for packing peanuts and disposable cups?
Polystyrene
Polystyrene foam is 95 to 98 per cent air, which is why it weighs so little. Styrofoam, strictly speaking, is a trade name for a denser foam board made to insulate buildings.
Q 19Which plastic, marked with the number 1 inside the recycling triangle, is used for most soft drink bottles?
PET
PET is the very same substance as the polyester in clothing, and only the name changes with the use. More than 60 per cent of it is made into fibres instead of packaging.
Q 20Which brand of plastic food containers, launched in 1946, became famous for being sold at parties in customers' homes?
Tupperware
Tupperware parties let women of the 1950s earn an independent income without holding a regular job. Earl Tupper, a former DuPont chemist, made his first container in Leominster, Massachusetts.
Q 24Phthalates are chemicals blended into plastics such as PVC mainly to make them what?
Flexible
Flexible PVC owes its softness to plasticisers, and 80 to 90 per cent of the world's supply goes into that one plastic. Without them it is the rigid material of pipes and window frames.
Q 25Which oil refinery process breaks large hydrocarbon molecules into the small ones used as raw materials for plastics?
Cracking
Cracking was patented in an early form in 1891 by the Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov. The steam version now supplies the light gases that chemical plants link into long chains.
Q 26Which term describes plastics such as epoxy that harden for good and break down, not melt, when reheated?
Thermosets
Thermosets owe their permanence to chains that are closely cross-linked to one another, so they can take a shape only once. Most everyday plastics can be melted and remoulded.
Q 27Polylactic acid, the most widely used filament in 3D printing, is a bioplastic usually made from which crop's starch?
Corn
Corn starch is fermented to make the lactic acid that is then linked into chains. The result composts only under the right conditions, and elsewhere it can last for hundreds of years.
Q 28In 1941 Henry Ford showed off a prototype car whose plastic body panels were made partly from which crop?
Soybeans
Soybeans went into fourteen plastic panels on a steel frame, which cut the car's weight by about a quarter. The experiment was partly a hedge against wartime steel rationing.
Q 29Which plastic, made by accident in an ICI laboratory in 1933, went on to become the most produced in the world?
Polyethylene
Polyethylene insulated radar cables so well that Britain made it a wartime secret and suspended sales. Two ICI chemists, Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson, had stumbled on it at Northwich.
Q 30Which building block of hard, clear plastics has been banned from baby bottles in Canada, the US and the EU?
BPA
BPA mimics the hormone oestrogen, and a British biochemist tested it as an artificial oestrogen in the early 1930s. Infants were judged to be most at risk, which is why bottles came first.