Polymers
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50 free Polymers trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Polymers are everywhere once you know how to spot them. A polymer is a giant molecule made by joining small units into a long chain, a bit like threading beads onto a string. Change the beads, or the way the chains tangle and tie together, and you get materials as different as a stretchy toy, a shopping bag, a tree trunk and your own fingernails. This quiz covers the science and the stories. There are questions on the key words taught in school chemistry, on the natural polymers that plants, insects and people make for themselves, and on the plastics and fibres invented in laboratories, several of them by happy accident. You will also meet the inventors, the toys, the kitchen gadgets and the odd wartime experiment that turned sticky failures into household names. The questions are written for kids, classrooms and families, with a few tougher ones for anyone revising for a science test. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess wrong.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which everyday product uses sodium polyacrylate, a polymer that soaks up hundreds of times its weight in water?
Baby diapers
Baby diapers became ultra-thin once this polymer let makers use only a fraction of the bulky fluff pulp. The powder swells into a gel as it drinks.
Q 02Rubber got its English name after chemist Joseph Priestley noticed the material was good at removing what?
Pencil marks
Pencil marks had been erased with crustless bread until then, so a springy lump that rubbed them off paper was simply called a rubber.
Q 03Which synthetic polymer, first sold as toothbrush bristles in 1938, later caused shop stampedes when used for stockings?
Nylon
Nylon stockings sold 64 million pairs in their first year, then vanished from shops as wartime production switched to parachutes and tents.
Q 04Which slippery polymer, discovered by accident by DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett, now coats non-stick frying pans?
Teflon
Teflon turned up when a bottle of gas meant for making refrigerants stopped flowing; sawn open, it was lined with a waxy white solid that was oddly slippery.
Q 05Which polymer fibre, developed by DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek in 1965, is woven into bullet-resistant vests?
Kevlar
Kevlar is five times stronger than steel for its weight, yet its first commercial job was replacing steel in racing tires.
Q 06Which country issued the world's first modern polymer banknotes in 1988, for its bicentennial year?
Australia
Australia had switched its whole currency to polymer by 1996, because the plastic notes last far longer than paper ones.
Q 07Which golden gem, a natural polymer formed from fossilised tree resin, sometimes holds prehistoric insects inside?
Amber
Amber begins as soft, sticky resin, so ants and other small creatures got stuck in it and were sealed inside as it slowly hardened.
Q 08Which white powder is stirred into PVA school glue to tie its long polymer chains together and make slime?
Borax
Borax bridges the glue's long molecules, so a runny liquid turns into a rubbery gel. It is a classic elementary school science demonstration.
Q 09Which plastic packaging material began in 1957 as a failed attempt by two inventors to make textured wallpaper?
Bubble wrap
Bubble wrap flopped as wallpaper for Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes, so Fielding co-founded Sealed Air in 1960 to sell it as padding instead.
Q 10Which toy maker has moulded its pieces from the tough plastic ABS ever since 1963?
Lego
Lego heats ABS to about 232 °C until it is like dough, then moulds it so precisely that bricks from 1958 still snap onto new ones.
Q 11Which term names a single small molecule, such as propylene, that links with thousands like it to form a polymer chain?
Monomer
Monomer molecules hook together like paper clips joined into a long chain, in a reaction that chemists call polymerization.
Q 12The word polymer was built from two Greek roots, poly and meros, that together carry which meaning?
Many parts
Many parts is the literal sense, and Jöns Jacob Berzelius coined the word in 1833, long before chemists could show what such giant molecules looked like.
Q 13Which natural polymer, the most abundant on Earth, stiffens plant stems and makes up over 90% of cotton fibre?
Cellulose
Cellulose cannot be digested by humans, so it passes through as dietary fibre, while cows and termites rely on gut microbes to break it down.
Q 21Which plastic, the most widely produced in the world, is used for carrier bags, bin liners and squeezy bottles?
Polyethylene
Polyethylene only became practical in 1933, when chemists at Britain's ICI squeezed ethylene gas under huge pressure and found, by accident, a white, waxy solid.
Q 22Which plastic, known by a three-letter abbreviation, is used for drain pipes, window frames and records nicknamed vinyl?
PVC
PVC is naturally rigid, as in pipes and window frames, and only turns bendy enough for flooring or cable coating when softening plasticizers are mixed in.
Q 23Which plastic, stamped with recycling code 1, is used for most clear bottles of fizzy soft drinks?
PET
PET bottles were invented in 1973 by Nathaniel Wyeth at DuPont; the plastic soaks up flavours, so refillable ones are given a sniffer test.
Q 14Which natural polymer, twisted into a double helix, carries the genetic instructions inside living cells?
DNA
DNA is built from just four kinds of repeating unit, called nucleotides, and the order of those four spells out every gene.
Q 15Proteins are natural polymers whose long chains are built from about 20 different kinds of which small molecule?
Amino acids
Amino acids join through peptide bonds, and Frederick Sanger proved the chains are straight rather than branched when he decoded insulin.
Q 16Which milky fluid, tapped from the bark of the Pará rubber tree, is the raw source of natural rubber?
Latex
Latex is a plant's defence against being eaten, and about one flowering plant in ten makes it, including poppies and milkweeds.
Q 17Which element did Charles Goodyear cook with natural rubber in 1839, making it far tougher and more durable?
Sulfur
Sulfur ties rubber's long chains to one another, and the process was named vulcanization after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
Q 18Which plastic of 1907, moulded into early telephones and radios, was the first made entirely from synthetic ingredients?
Bakelite
Bakelite made its inventor Leo Baekeland famous, and because it resists heat and carries no current it turned radios and telephones into household goods.
Q 19Which plastic is puffed up with gas to make white packing peanuts and takeaway foam cups?
Polystyrene
Polystyrene foam is 95 to 98 percent air, which makes it a fine heat insulator and so light that it blows around as litter.
Q 20Which natural polymer fibre is unwound from the cocoons spun by mulberry-eating moth caterpillars?
Silk
Silk is mostly the protein fibroin, and traces of it found in ancient Chinese tombs date back about 8,500 years.
Q 24Which synthetic fibre is brushed into soft fleece for jackets and blended with cotton to resist wrinkles?
Polyester
Polyester fleece was developed in 1979 by Malden Mills, whose boss chose not to patent it, so cheap versions quickly spread around the world.
Q 25Which rubbery, heat-proof polymer is used for flexible baking moulds, bathroom sealant and kitchen spatulas?
Silicone
Silicone is unusual among polymers because its backbone is an inorganic chain of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms, with no carbon in the spine at all.
Q 26Which synthetic rubber, invented at DuPont in 1930, is foamed to make the wetsuits worn by divers and surfers?
Neoprene
Neoprene first went on sale as DuPrene, and early batches smelled so foul that the way it was manufactured had to be changed.
Q 27Which stretchy fibre, invented at DuPont in 1958, can be pulled to five times its length and still spring back?
Spandex
Spandex is an anagram of the word expands, which is exactly what the fibre does; in continental Europe it goes by the name elastane.
Q 28Which clear plastic, sold as Plexiglas and Perspex, formed the cockpit canopies of Second World War aircraft?
Acrylic
Acrylic also went into wartime submarine periscopes and gun turrets, and the first clear sheets were trademarked as Plexiglas in 1933.
Q 29Which natural polymer, stored by plants as an energy reserve in potatoes and rice, turns blue-black with iodine?
Starch
Starch is the most common carbohydrate in the human diet, and the instant colour change with iodine is a favourite classroom test for it.
Q 30Which simple sugar is the only building block of glycogen, the branched polymer that stores energy in the human liver?
Glucose
Glucose units pack about 30,000 to a single glycogen granule, and plants chain the very same sugar into their own storage and structural polymers.