Titanium
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40 free Titanium trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Titanium has a reputation as the metal of jet engines and expensive watches, but its story is stranger than that. It was found by a country clergyman examining sand from a stream, named after figures from Greek myth, and for more than a century after that nobody managed to produce the pure metal. These fun facts about titanium are written as quiz questions. They cover where the element comes from and how it got its name, why it is so strong for its weight, how it resists corrosion, and the places it turns up today, from aircraft and submarines to hip replacements, phones, paint and candy. A few questions follow titanium into space, down to the ocean floor and onto the pop charts. The quiz suits curious readers, chemistry students and anyone building a science round for a trivia night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the difficulty runs from easy openers to a handful of questions for real enthusiasts.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which singer co-wrote David Guetta's dance anthem 'Titanium' and provided the vocals on the hit single?
Sia
Sia recorded her vocal only as a demo for other artists. Katy Perry, who had turned the song down, advised David Guetta to keep Sia on the track.
Q 02Which Cold War spy plane, able to cruise beyond Mach 3, had a structure that was 85% titanium?
SR-71 Blackbird
The SR-71 Blackbird needed titanium because its skin heated well beyond 260 °C at cruising speed. Even factory tools mattered: cadmium-plated ones were banned for corroding the metal.
Q 03Which Spanish city is home to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum, famous for its shimmering skin of titanium plates?
Bilbao
Bilbao's museum wears titanium plates arranged like scales. Architect Philip Johnson called it the greatest building of our time.
Q 04Trace amounts of titanium, paired with iron, give which precious gemstone its characteristic blue color?
Sapphire
Sapphire owes its star effect to titanium as well. Fine needles of rutile, a titanium mineral, scatter light into the six-rayed star of a star sapphire.
Q 05Titanium dioxide and zinc oxide are the two mineral active ingredients used in which everyday beach-bag product?
Sunscreen
Sunscreen sold as 'mineral' uses only these two compounds as active ingredients. They work by reflecting, scattering and absorbing ultraviolet light.
Q 06Far from rare, titanium ranks as the ninth most abundant element in which part of the natural world?
Earth's crust
Earth's crust is about 0.63% titanium by mass. A US Geological Survey analysis found the metal in 784 of the 801 types of igneous rock it tested.
Q 07Which Apple smartphone, launched with a USB-C port instead of Lightning, was the first with a titanium frame?
iPhone 15 Pro
The iPhone 15 Pro has an enclosure of grade 5 titanium, the aerospace alloy that is also a common material for artificial joints.
Q 08Titanium's lack of magnetism matters most for implant patients who need which type of medical imaging?
An MRI scan
An MRI scan surrounds the body with a powerful magnetic field. Titanium is non-ferromagnetic, so people with titanium hips or dental implants can be examined safely.
Q 09About 95% of refined titanium ends up as titanium dioxide, a paint and paper pigment of which color?
White
White titanium dioxide is chemically inert, very opaque and resists fading in sunlight. As a food coloring it carries the code E171.
Q 10Unalloyed titanium is as strong under tension as some grades of which common building metal, yet far less dense?
Steel
Steel is the usual yardstick because titanium has the highest tensile-strength-to-density ratio of any metallic element. It is 60% denser than aluminum but more than twice as strong as the commonest aluminum alloy.
Q 11The Titans who gave titanium its name were, in Hesiod's Theogony, the children of the sky god and which goddess?
Gaia
Gaia was the mother of twelve Titans in Hesiod's account. Chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth borrowed their name for the metal in 1795.
Q 12In which English county did the Reverend William Gregor discover titanium in black sand from a stream?
Cornwall
Cornwall's black sand stuck to a magnet because of the iron in it. Analyzing it in 1791, Gregor also found an oxide of a metal that matched no known element.
Q 13Martin Klaproth, the chemist who named titanium, had earlier discovered which element and named it after a planet?
Uranium
Uranium came first, in 1789, honoring the planet William Herschel had discovered eight years earlier. Titanium got its mythological name six years after that.
Q 21Which country built the Alfa class, fast attack submarines whose hulls were made of titanium alloy?
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union's Alfa boats could exceed 40 knots underwater. American intelligence confirmed the hull metal by retrieving shavings that fell from a truck leaving the shipyard.
Q 22Spectacle frames that spring back into shape after bending use a 'memory' alloy of titanium and which other metal?
Nickel
Nickel and titanium make nitinol, named for the two metals plus the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, where it emerged from a 1959 search for missile nose cone alloys.
Q 23The hard, gold-colored coating seen on many drill bits is a compound of titanium and which other element?
Nitrogen
Q 14Titanium, element 22, belongs to which large family in the central block of the periodic table?
Transition metals
Transition metals often form compounds in more than one oxidation state. Titanium favors +4, as in its dioxide, but many +3 compounds exist too.
Q 15NASA's Juno probe shields its electronics inside a vault with titanium walls to survive radiation at which planet?
Jupiter
Jupiter's radiation would fry unshielded electronics on the first close pass. The vault's titanium walls are about 1 cm thick, chosen partly because they handle launch stresses well.
Q 16The submersible Limiting Factor carried explorers inside a titanium sphere to which deepest known point in the ocean?
Challenger Deep
Challenger Deep was visited by more than 21 people in that one sub. Its crew sphere of 90 mm thick titanium was machined to within 99.933% of perfectly round.
Q 17Which Mars candy lost its titanium dioxide coloring in 2025, after a lawsuit over the additive was dismissed?
Skittles
Skittles faced a class-action suit over the additive in 2022. That same year the EU banned titanium dioxide in food after its safety agency raised concerns.
Q 18Paint manufacturers adopted titanium dioxide as a less toxic substitute for a pigment based on which heavy metal?
Lead
Lead-based paint was used from antiquity despite its toxicity. Its titanium replacement is considered safe enough for toothpaste.
Q 19Synthetic rutile, a form of titanium dioxide, was sold under the name Titania as a substitute for which gemstone?
Diamond
Diamond actually has less fire than the imitation. Synthetic rutile splits light into colors so strongly that cut stones look almost opal-like.
Q 20A 42.5-meter titanium monument built in Moscow for the 1980 Olympic Games honors which space pioneer?
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin's statue was assembled from 238 cast titanium segments and weighs 12 tons. Titanium is a metal often used in spacecraft.
Nitrogen and titanium form titanium nitride, which looks like gold and can triple the working life of a cutting tool. Titanium will even burn in the pure gas.
Q 24Armalcolite, a titanium-rich mineral first found on the Moon, takes its name from the crew of which mission?
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins each lent letters to the name. The mineral turned up in samples from Tranquility Base in 1969.
Q 25Titanium dental implants can last for decades because which tissue bonds directly to the metal?
Bone
Bone fused so firmly to titanium chambers placed in rabbits' legs that researcher Per-Ingvar Brånemark could not remove them. He named the bond osseointegration.
Q 26Which implanted heart device is usually sealed inside a titanium case, because the metal is inert in the body?
Pacemaker
Pacemaker makers began sealing the generator in a metal case in 1969, and titanium had become the standard casing by the mid-1970s.
Q 27Which electrical surface treatment gives titanium jewelry and wedding rings an array of bright colors without any dye?
Anodizing
Anodizing thickens the oxide film on the metal, and light interference in that film creates the color. The shade depends on the voltage used.
Q 28Titanium resists which fuming mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, famous for being able to dissolve gold?
Aqua regia
Aqua regia is stopped by the oxide film that forms on titanium the instant it meets air. That protective layer starts out only 1 to 2 nanometers thick.
Q 29Titanium-based catalysts that won Ziegler and Natta the 1963 Nobel Prize are used to mass-produce which materials?
Plastics
Plastics such as polyethylene and polypropylene, the world's largest-volume commodity polymers, are made with catalysts built around titanium chlorides.
Q 30Titanium tetrachloride, nicknamed 'tickle', was once used on film sets to create which special effect?
Smoke
Smoke pours off the liquid when it meets humid air. The clouds also carry hydrochloric acid, which is harsh on the lungs, so film crews gave it up.