Sinkholes
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40 free Sinkholes trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A sinkhole can take thousands of years to form and only seconds to appear. One moment there is a road, a lawn or a museum floor; the next there is a hole where it used to be. That mix of slow chemistry and sudden drama is what makes sinkholes so compelling, and so unsettling for anyone who lives above one. This quiz covers the whole subject: which kinds of rock dissolve and why, the warning signs that a collapse is coming, and how pumping, drilling and building can set one off. It also tours the most famous holes on Earth, from flooded pits that draw divers and daredevils to collapses that made headlines around the world, with a few sacred wells, legends and screen appearances along the way. It suits earth science students and teachers looking for review questions, quiz hosts who want a round on natural hazards, and anyone who has watched the news and wondered how firm ground can simply disappear. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Eight rare cars of which American sports model fell into a sinkhole beneath a Bowling Green, Kentucky museum?
Corvette
The National Corvette Museum turned its disaster into an exhibit about the collapse. Five of the eight cars were hauled out within a month, some of them badly damaged.
Q 02Off the coast of which Central American country does the Great Blue Hole, a 318-metre-wide marine sinkhole, lie?
Belize
Belize protects the Great Blue Hole as part of its barrier reef reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The pit sits near the middle of Lighthouse Reef, about 70 km from the mainland.
Q 03Which rock, built largely from the remains of sea creatures, most often dissolves to form sinkholes and caves?
Limestone
Limestone gives way slowly: water seeping through its cracks carves hidden voids until the surface loses its support. The land above often stays intact until the moment it drops.
Q 04Which country's capital saw a three-story building vanish into a 20-metre-wide hole after Tropical Storm Agatha?
Guatemala
Guatemala City stands on loose volcanic debris, so geologists say the 2010 hole was no true sinkhole: escaping water had washed out a cavity from below. A similar pit had opened nearby in 2007.
Q 05Which US state, where over 110 sinkholes opened around Dover during a 2010 freeze, is famous for frequent collapses?
Florida
Florida rests on a thick platform of soluble rock, and its collapses cluster in the centre of the state. On the fringes, where the rock is far younger, sinkholes are rare.
Q 06Which explorer made the Great Blue Hole famous after sailing his ship Calypso there to chart its depths?
Jacques Cousteau
Jacques Cousteau brought the Calypso to the reef in 1971 and declared the site one of the world's best places to scuba dive. His expedition measured the pit at about 125 metres deep.
Q 07A sinkhole that opened in Daisetta, Texas in spring 2008 earned a local nickname punning on which holiday?
Cinco de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo became the Sinkhole de Mayo for locals as the pit spread to about 183 by 160 metres. The town had already seen the ground open in 1969 and 1981.
Q 08Which country holds the world's deepest sinkhole, a 662-metre pit whose local name translates as Heavenly Pit?
China
China calls such giants tiankengs, and Xiaozhai Tiankeng in Chongqing is the deepest of all. Visitors descend a 2,800-step staircase, and a waterfall pours over the rim in the rainy season.
Q 09Which household change, along with fresh cracks and sagging ground, can be an early warning of a sinkhole?
Doors that jam
Doors that jam can mean the ground under a building has started to move. Some collapses give such hints first, along with cracking noises; others arrive with no warning at all.
Q 10Which NBC drama opens with a giant sinkhole in Los Angeles that drops survivors into a dangerous primeval land?
La Brea
La Brea takes its name from the tar pits where the fictional hole opens, swallowing people, vehicles and a whole car museum. The pit turns out to be a portal to 10,000 BC.
Q 11What name, from a Yucatec Maya word, is given to the water-filled sinkholes of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula?
Cenote
Cenote comes from a Maya word for any place with reachable water underground, and the peninsula has thousands of them. Each formed when a cave roof fell in and exposed the water table.
Q 12Rainwater dissolves bedrock into sinkholes because, after absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, it is slightly what?
Acidic
Acidic, though only mildly: the dissolved gas makes a weak carbonic acid that reacts with calcium carbonate. Over many years that is enough to hollow out whole caverns.
Q 13City holes reported as sinkholes are most often collapses caused by the failure of which buried infrastructure?
Old pipes
Q 21A ring of sinkhole pools in Yucatán traces the rim of which buried crater, left by a dinosaur-killing asteroid?
Chicxulub
Chicxulub lies buried beneath the peninsula, and the arc of pools helped scientists confirm where it sits. Water probably moves more easily through the fractured rock along its rim.
Q 22NASA tested a diving robot in Mexico's Zacatón sinkhole as practice for exploring which ice-covered moon of Jupiter?
Europa
Europa was the goal: NASA's autonomous DEPTHX robot used Zacatón to learn to explore deep water unaided. The flooded pit is 339 metres deep and fed by volcanically heated water.
Q 23To which Maya rain god were valuables and human victims thrown into the sacred sinkhole well at Chichen Itza?
Chaac
Old pipes give way, and a burst water main or broken sewer washes the soil out from under a street. Strictly speaking, such man-made holes are not true sinkholes.
Q 14A Texaco oil rig emptied Louisiana's Lake Peigneur into a vast sinkhole in 1980 by piercing which kind of mine?
Salt
Salt was being dug beneath the lake when the water poured in, yet all 55 miners escaped. The whirlpool swallowed the rig and eleven barges, and the lake refilled from the sea as brackish water.
Q 15Sinkhole pools were vital to Maya cities such as Chichen Itza because the Yucatán Peninsula has almost no what?
Rivers
Rivers barely exist on the peninsula because rain sinks straight into the porous rock. Major Maya settlements were therefore built around natural wells that reached the water below.
Q 16Up to three million of which animals swirl out of the Devil's Sinkhole cavern in Texas on summer evenings?
Free-tailed bats
Mexican free-tailed bats roost in the cavern from April to October, and visitors book evening tours to watch them leave. In the 1920s workers mined their guano there for fertiliser.
Q 17Which famous US highway passes the Blue Hole of Santa Rosa, a clear sinkhole pool popular with scuba divers?
Route 66
Route 66 brought motorists right past the pool from the 1920s, and it remains a New Mexico tourist stop. Its water stays at 62°F all year, fed by 3,000 gallons a minute.
Q 18Which shrinking Middle Eastern lake has lost most of its western beach resorts to sinkholes opening along its shore?
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea has been dropping for decades, and fresh water seeping in behind the retreating shoreline dissolves buried mineral layers. The cavities left behind then cave in.
Q 19Heavy pumping from which source, for farms and city supplies, can trigger new sinkholes in prone areas?
Groundwater
Groundwater helps hold up the soil above buried cavities, so lowering its level removes that support. Changing natural drainage with ponds, ditches and paving can have the same effect.
Q 20What term, named after a plateau shared by Slovenia and Italy, describes landscapes riddled with sinkholes and caves?
Karst
Karst is the German form of Kras, the Slovene name for the stony plateau behind Trieste, and geologists adopted it in the 1890s. It now covers any terrain of caves, springs and disappearing streams.
Chaac was believed to live in such wells, so offerings went into the water in times of drought. Dredging that began in 1904 brought up gold, jade and human bones.
Q 24Which island nation has Dean's Blue Hole, a 202-metre marine sinkhole that hosts an elite freediving contest?
Bahamas
The Bahamas holds Dean's Blue Hole in a bay on Long Island, where the Vertical Blue contest is held. A freediver there has passed 90 metres on one breath without even wearing fins.
Q 25In which country is the Blue Hole of Dahab, a Red Sea sinkhole reputed to have the most diver deaths anywhere?
Egypt
Egypt's Sinai coast holds the site, where the danger is the Arch, a tunnel to the open sea whose roof lies 55 metres down. The pool itself is no riskier than other local dives.
Q 26In which modern country did German troops dump cannons into the sinkhole lake Otjikoto before surrendering in 1915?
Namibia
Namibia has only two permanent natural lakes, and Otjikoto is the smaller. The retreating troops sank their weapons so the enemy could not use them, and two cannons still lie there.
Q 27Which country's Sarisariñama plateau holds Sima Humboldt, a 314-metre-deep sinkhole with its own forest on the floor?
Venezuela
Venezuela's flat-topped tepui mountains are sandstone, making Sima Humboldt the largest sinkhole known in that rock. A pilot spotted it from the air in 1961; nobody climbed down until 1974.
Q 28The Czech sinkhole Macocha, more than 138 metres deep, is named after which wicked relative in a local folk tale?
Stepmother
Stepmother is what the name means in Czech, and the folk tale explains why: she threw her stepson into the abyss. He survived, and in one telling the villagers threw her in instead.
Q 29What did divers find deep inside the Great Blue Hole that proved the flooded pit formed as a dry cave?
Stalactites
Stalactites grow only where water drips through air, so the cave stood above the sea when levels were far lower. Some hang five degrees off vertical, showing the land later tilted.
Q 30Five sports cars of which make, parked at a repair shop, sank into the Winter Park sinkhole of 1981?
Porsche
Porsche owners were not the only losers: the hole also took a house, a camper truck and the deep end of the city swimming pool. The water-filled pit is now called Lake Rose.