States of Matter Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
100 free States of Matter trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Solid, liquid, gas — and then plasma, superfluids and condensates colder than deep space. This trivia about matter in science covers the classical states, phase changes like sublimation and deposition, melting and boiling points, what a gas actually is, and the strange states physicists have made in the lab. It works for a classroom review or a science-themed quiz night. Every answer is sourced, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which everyday sight is plasma, the fourth state of matter?
Lightning
Lightning is plasma: in a split second the bolt heats the air in its path to around 30,000 °C, and that air's explosive expansion is the thunder.
Q 02Particles in a liquid stay close but slide past each other, so a liquid keeps what?
Its volume but not its shape
Its volume but not its shape: with no container at all, a small falling raindrop is not a teardrop but a tiny ball, and bigger ones flatten like a burger bun.
Q 03Which property of water lets a water strider walk across a pond without sinking?
Surface tension
Surface tension: water molecules cling to one another so strongly that the top layer acts like a stretched skin, and the insect's long legs spread its weight across it.
Q 04Propane is a gas at room temperature, so what keeps it liquid inside a barbecue tank?
High pressure
High pressure holds the propane as a liquid; open the valve and, as the pressure falls, it boils back into the gas that feeds the flame.
Q 05What does plasma contain that an ordinary gas lacks?
Free-moving charged particles
Free-moving charged particles make a plasma respond to magnets, which lets fusion researchers confine it with magnetic fields and heat it hotter than the heart of a star.
Q 06Which everyday technology uses matter that flows like a liquid but stays ordered like a crystal?
LCD screens
LCD screens: the letters stand for liquid-crystal display, and a weak electric field is enough to realign the crystals, which is how early ones showed digits on calculators and watches.
Q 07Which of these is almost all plasma, the universe's commonest state of ordinary matter?
The Sun
The Sun is a ball of plasma with no solid surface at all, and since the other stars and the thin gas between them are plasma too, plasma far outweighs solids, liquids and gases.
Q 08Which ultra-light solid, about 99.8% empty space, did NASA's Stardust probe use to catch comet dust?
Aerogel
Aerogel is a gel whose liquid has been swapped for air; though made of the same silica as window glass, the Stardust blocks were about 1,000 times less dense.
Q 09Which scientist, whose glowing vacuum tubes bear his name, called their contents a 'fourth state of matter' in 1879?
William Crookes
William Crookes took the glowing rays in his tubes for 'radiant matter'; in 1897 J. J. Thomson showed they were streams of a new particle, the electron.
Q 10The word "gas" was coined by which chemist, born decades before Robert Boyle?
Jan Baptist van Helmont
Jan Baptist van Helmont, a Flemish physician, noticed that burning charcoal and fermenting grape juice gave off the same 'wild spirit', which he named gas sylvestre.
Q 11The word "gas" is thought to be a transcription of which Ancient Greek word?
Chaos
Chaos, in its old sense of empty space, is the probable root: a Dutch g sounds much like the Greek kh, so the word may simply be chaos as its coiner said it.
Q 12Unlike a liquid, a gas is described as what kind of fluid?
Compressible
Compressible: the molecules of a gas are so far apart that it can be squeezed into a fraction of its volume, while a liquid's molecules already touch and barely give.
Q 13Which of these is a noble gas made of single atoms?
Neon
Neon's atoms have a full outer shell of electrons, so they neither pair up nor react, while oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine all go around as two-atom molecules.
Q 21Condensation, a gas turning into liquid, is the reverse of which process?
Vaporization
Vaporization covers both boiling and evaporation; run it backwards and you get the fog on a pair of glasses or the drips on a cold window pane.
Q 22Where on a liquid does evaporation take place?
At its surface
At its surface, and at any temperature; boiling is different because vapour bubbles form inside the liquid, which happens only once it is hot enough.
Q 23Why does sweating cool you down?
Evaporating molecules carry energy away
Q 14Gas particles spreading out to fill a container evenly is called what?
Diffusion
Diffusion is why a scent released in one corner soon reaches the far side of a still room, though endless collisions with air molecules slow each molecule's trip.
Q 15Boyle's, Charles's and Avogadro's laws combine into which single equation, PV = nRT?
The ideal gas law
The ideal gas law describes an imaginary gas whose molecules neither attract nor repel one another; no real gas is ideal, but most come close under everyday conditions.
Q 16A solid turning directly into a gas, as dry ice does, is called what?
Sublimation
Sublimation is also why old mothballs shrink away to nothing, and why snow can vanish from the ground on a dry, sunny winter day without ever melting.
Q 17Dry ice is the solid form of which substance?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide has no liquid form at everyday air pressure, so a block of it shrinks straight into cold gas and leaves no puddle behind: hence 'dry' ice.
Q 18Which of these is far colder than dry ice's −78.5 °C?
Liquid nitrogen
Liquid nitrogen boils at −196 °C, more than a hundred degrees below dry ice, which is why clinics use it to freeze off warts and labs to store living cells.
Q 19Which preservation method removes water by turning ice straight to vapour under a vacuum?
Freeze-drying
Freeze-drying leaves food light and long-lasting because the ice leaves as vapour without ever wetting it, which is why hikers and astronauts carry their meals this way.
Q 20Water vapour turning directly into frost without becoming liquid is an example of what?
Deposition
Deposition also builds snowflakes: high in a cloud, water vapour freezes straight onto an ice crystal that began around a speck of dust or pollen.
Evaporating molecules carry energy away, which is why sweat cools you poorly on a humid day: the damp air slows evaporation from your skin.
Q 24Why does water boil at a cooler temperature up a mountain?
Lower pressure
Lower pressure in the thin mountain air lets water boil at only about 70 °C on top of Everest, so a three-minute egg can take far longer up there.
Q 25Which black substance, brittle enough to shatter under a hammer, has been dripping from a Queensland funnel since 1930?
Pitch
Pitch flows so slowly that just nine drops fell in the experiment's first 87 years, and the professor who tended it for 52 of them never saw one fall.
Q 26Which metal has the highest melting point of all?
Tungsten
Tungsten stays solid to about 3,400 °C, which is why it was drawn into the white-hot filaments of incandescent light bulbs.
Q 27Deep inside Jupiter, crushing pressure is thought to turn hydrogen into what unusual form?
A liquid metal
A liquid metal: the pressure strips electrons from the hydrogen atoms so that it conducts electricity, and its motion is thought to drive Jupiter's huge magnetic field.
Q 28Which is the only metal that is liquid at standard temperature and pressure?
Mercury
Mercury stays liquid down to about −39 °C, and its old name quicksilver means 'living silver', after the way the bright metal runs about.
Q 29Which metal melts in the palm of your hand, at just under 30 °C?
Gallium
Gallium's low melting point was predicted by Mendeleev, who left a gap for the element in his periodic table four years before anyone had found it.
Q 30Which non-metal element is liquid at room temperature?
Bromine
Bromine is a dark red-brown liquid whose choking fumes gave it its name, from the Greek bromos, 'stench'.