Skin Cancer
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40 free Skin Cancer trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the world, and also one of the most preventable. Most cases trace back to ultraviolet light, which means that what people know about the sun, shade and sunscreen makes a real difference. This quiz covers the main types of skin cancer and how they differ, the checklist doctors teach for spotting a worrying mole, the science of sunburn and sun protection, and the surgeons, scientists and well-known patients who shaped what medicine knows about the disease. It is written for curious players, students and anyone brushing up for a health class or an awareness event. It is a knowledge quiz, not a diagnosis: if a spot on your skin is new, changing or simply worrying you, show it to a doctor.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which skin cancer, typically a shiny, pearly bump on sun-exposed skin, is the most common type of all?
Basal cell carcinoma
Basal cell carcinoma accounts for about 80% of skin cancers other than melanoma, yet it grows slowly and is unlikely to spread or kill.
Q 02In the ABCDE checklist for spotting melanoma on the skin, what does the letter A stand for?
Asymmetry
Asymmetry means the shape of one half of a mole does not match the other half, whereas a harmless mole is usually an even round or oval.
Q 03Which musician was diagnosed in 1977 with a melanoma under a toenail and died of the disease in 1981?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley rejected his doctors' advice to have the toe amputated, citing his religious beliefs, and died in May 1981 at the age of 36.
Q 04Which Southern Hemisphere country has the highest per-capita rate of melanoma in the world?
Australia
Australia was settled largely by migrants from Europe, whose fair skin is poorly adapted to the country's direct, intense sunlight.
Q 05Which French fashion designer is credited with making suntans chic after a 1920s trip to the Riviera?
Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel is said to have caught the sun by accident, and her fans copied the look; before the 1920s, tanned skin was associated with outdoor laborers.
Q 06Which former US president said in 2015 that melanoma had spread to his brain, yet was cancer-free within months?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter was 90 when he shared the diagnosis; his scans showed no cancer by that December, and he went on to live to 100.
Q 07In 1775 surgeon Percivall Pott traced scrotal skin cancer to soot, the first cancer linked to which occupation?
Chimney sweeps
Chimney sweeps gave medicine its first proof that something in the environment could cause cancer, and the disease was later named after their trade.
Q 08Variants of the MC1R gene raise the risk of melanoma and also produce which natural hair color?
Red
Red hair has far more of the pigment pheomelanin than of dark eumelanin, and usually comes with skin that is sensitive to ultraviolet light.
Q 09In the ABCDE melanoma checklist, the letter D warns about moles wider than which everyday object?
A pencil eraser
A pencil eraser is roughly six millimeters across, the width at which the checklist's D, for diameter, says a mole deserves a doctor's look.
Q 10Which fairy-tale bird gives its name to the warning sign of a mole that looks unlike a person's other moles?
The ugly duckling
The ugly duckling sign works because one person's moles tend to look like one another, so the odd one out is more likely to be a melanoma.
Q 11The UV Index used in weather forecasts around the world was invented in 1992 by scientists in which country?
Canada
Canada became the first country to issue next-day UV forecasts in May 1992, and the World Health Organization adopted the scale as the global standard two years later.
Q 12The SPF number on a sunscreen bottle measures protection against which rays, the main cause of sunburn?
UVB
UVB is far better at burning skin than longer-wave UVA, so an SPF figure alone says little about protection from the latter.
Q 13Which nutrient does human skin make in sunlight, a benefit doctors weigh against the risk of skin cancer?
Vitamin D
Vitamin D forms in skin under the Sun's rays, and even high-SPF sunscreen lets enough of them through for the body to keep making it.
Q 21Xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare disorder that makes sunlight dangerous, stops skin cells repairing damage to what?
Their DNA
Their DNA goes unrepaired after ultraviolet exposure, so people with the condition, nicknamed children of the night, must avoid daylight entirely.
Q 22Melanoma in situ, the earliest stage of the disease, is confined to which layer of the skin?
Epidermis
Epidermis, the skin's outer layer, is where the pigment cells sit; an in situ melanoma has yet to push down into the dermis beneath.
Q 23On the Fitzpatrick scale of skin tones, which category always burns in the sun and never tans?
Type I
Type I is the palest of the six categories on the scale, which American dermatologist Thomas Fitzpatrick devised in 1975 to predict how skin responds to ultraviolet light.
Q 14Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer causing purple skin patches, was among the first illnesses linked to which disease?
AIDS
AIDS made the once-rare tumor widely known in the 1980s, and the antiretroviral drugs that control HIV both prevent and often treat it.
Q 15Which white compound, found in calamine lotion and diaper creams, blocks UV rays in mineral sunscreens?
Zinc oxide
Zinc oxide absorbs a broader span of ultraviolet light than any other sunscreen ingredient approved in the United States.
Q 16Which handheld instrument, pairing a light with a tenfold magnifier, do doctors use to examine a suspicious mole?
Dermatoscope
Dermatoscope checks by trained doctors detect melanoma more accurately than unaided inspection, with sensitivity up to 20% higher.
Q 17Which procedure do doctors rely on to confirm whether a suspicious patch or mole is skin cancer?
A biopsy
A biopsy removes tissue so that it can be checked for cancer cells, which is the only way to diagnose melanoma for certain.
Q 18On which part of the body does melanoma most often appear in women, in contrast to the back in men?
The legs
The legs lead in women and the back in men, though melanoma can on rare occasions begin away from the skin, in the mouth or the intestines.
Q 19Which 1987 ozone treaty is forecast to prevent over 280 million skin cancer cases in the United States alone?
Montreal Protocol
The Montreal Protocol phased out the chemicals that were thinning the ozone layer, which shields the ground from the Sun's ultraviolet rays.
Q 20Which skin cancer operation, devised in 1938, removes a tumor in stages that are each checked under a microscope?
Mohs surgery
Mohs surgery is named after surgeon Frederic Mohs; checking every stage lets the surgeon keep a very narrow margin and spare healthy skin.
Q 24Which rough, sandpaper-like patch caused by years of sun can turn into squamous cell skin cancer?
Actinic keratosis
Actinic keratosis, also known as solar keratosis, has up to a 20% chance of progressing when untreated, so doctors recommend having it treated.
Q 25To learn whether a melanoma has begun to spread, surgeons remove and test the 'sentinel' one of which structures?
Lymph nodes
Lymph nodes are tested because the sentinel node is the first one that cancer cells leaving a tumor are likely to reach, so it shows whether the disease has traveled.
Q 26Years of drinking water contaminated with which poisonous element can cause skin cancer?
Arsenic
Arsenic reaches more than 200 million people at unsafe levels through their drinking water, mostly from naturally contaminated groundwater.
Q 27Horses of which coat color are so prone to melanoma that up to 80% develop it during their lifetime?
Gray
Gray horses are born darker and lose their coat pigment with age, and the gene behind that fading also raises their risk of melanoma.
Q 28Which sunscreen brand traces its origins to a lotion that pharmacist Benjamin Green created in 1944?
Coppertone
Coppertone began with Green, who as a wartime airman had also made a petroleum-jelly sun barrier for US soldiers in the Pacific tropics.
Q 29On the UV Index, which official label applies to a reading of 11 or higher, the top category?
Extreme
Extreme sits one band above very high, which covers readings of 8 to 10, and signals the greatest risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure.
Q 30Melanoma usually starts in the skin, but in which sense organ is it the most common cancer to arise in adults?
The eye
The eye has pigment cells in its uvea, the layer that includes the iris, and the tumors that begin there are called uveal melanomas.