Welding Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
100 free Welding trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free welding trivia questions with answers. This welding trivia quiz is built for people who actually strike arcs, and for anyone who wants to understand what they are watching. It covers the processes (SMAW, GMAW, GTAW, submerged arc, friction stir, electron beam), the gases and metals (argon, acetylene, tungsten), and the history from Bronze Age forge welding to Benardos's carbon arc, Kjellberg's coated electrodes and the first auto-darkening helmet. There are also questions on the strange corners of the trade: welding underwater and in orbit, the Liberty ships that cracked in half, cold welding in the vacuum of space, and the 1,600-year-old iron pillar in Delhi that refuses to rust. Difficulty ranges from apprentice to old hand. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries the sentence that supports it, so you can settle shop-floor arguments with it.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Until the late 19th century, what was the only welding process for iron and steel?
Forge welding
Forge welding, heating iron and hammering the pieces together, was the only welding method for millennia. The Iron Pillar of Delhi, from around 400 CE, was forge-welded.
Q 02The earliest known welding dates to which period?
The Bronze Age
The Bronze Age: small gold boxes made with pressure-welded lap joints survive from that period. Forge welding of iron came later, in the Iron Age.
Q 03Which scientist discovered the short-pulse electric arc in 1800, laying the groundwork for arc welding?
Humphry Davy
Humphry Davy presented the results in 1801 and rediscovered the continuous arc in 1808, unaware that Vasily Petrov had already done so in Russia.
Q 04Nikolay Benardos introduced the first practical arc welding method in 1881. What kind of electrodes did it use?
Carbon
He developed it with Polish engineer Stanisław Olszewski in a French lab; they received a British patent in 1885. He called the process Elektrogefest.
Q 05The first patents for resistance welding, in 1885, went to which American inventor?
Elihu Thomson
Elihu Thomson received the first resistance-welding patents in 1885 and kept improving the process for 15 years. His Thomson-Houston company merged into General Electric in 1892.
Q 06Oxygen-acetylene welding was first developed in 1903 by engineers from which country?
France
France's Edmond Fouché and Charles Picard developed it in 1903; acetylene itself had been discovered by Edmund Davy in 1836.
Q 07An oxy-acetylene flame burns at roughly what temperature?
3,500 °C
An oxy-acetylene flame reaches about 3,500 °C (roughly 6,300 °F), the hottest common fuel-gas flame and well above an oxyhydrogen flame at around 2,800 °C.
Q 08What is the chemical formula of acetylene?
C2H2
Acetylene is C2H2, systematically named ethyne, with a triple bond joining its two carbon atoms. It is usually produced from calcium carbide and water.
Q 09Around 1900, Oscar Kjellberg and Arthur Strohmenger introduced what innovation to arc welding?
The first coated electrodes
The first coated electrodes: Kjellberg dipped iron wire in carbonates and silicates, Strohmenger used clay and lime, and Kjellberg went on to found ESAB.
Q 10What is the informal name for SMAW, the manual process that uses a flux-coated consumable electrode?
Stick welding
Stick welding: the welder hand-feeds a rod-shaped, flux-coated electrode, and the burning flux protects the weld. Its portability made it the staple process for field repair and maintenance work.
Q 11In stick welding, what two protective by-products come from the electrode's disintegrating flux coating?
Shielding gas and slag
Shielding gas and slag both keep atmospheric contamination out of the molten pool; the slag is chipped off afterwards.
Q 12MIG and MAG are subtypes of which process?
Gas metal arc welding
Gas metal arc welding covers both: MIG uses an inert gas, MAG an active one like CO2, and the arc forms between a consumable wire electrode and the workpiece.
Q 13Gas metal arc welding was developed in 1948 by which US research organisation?
Battelle Memorial Institute
Q 21Electron-beam welding is usually performed in what environment?
In a vacuum
The vacuum stops the beam scattering. German physicist Karl-Heinz Steigerwald built the first practical machine, operating from 1958.
Q 22Plasma arc welding was invented in 1957 by whom?
Robert Gage
Robert Gage of Union Carbide invented plasma arc welding in 1957, the same year flux-cored arc welding debuted. Plasma cutting is a spin-off of the process.
Q 23Exothermic (thermite) welding heats metal using a reaction between a metal oxide and powdered what?
Aluminium
Powdered aluminium reduces the iron oxide in an aluminothermic reaction that yields molten iron at about 2,500 °C with no external power. Hans Goldschmidt patented the process in the 1890s.
The Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio developed gas metal arc welding in 1948. Early versions needed costly inert gas, so the process was first used mainly on aluminium and other non-ferrous metals.
Q 14The use of CO2 as a GMAW shielding atmosphere was developed in which year?
1953
In 1953 carbon dioxide was introduced as a GMAW shielding gas. Far cheaper than argon or helium, it made the process economical for steel and drove its rapid spread.
Q 15TIG welding uses an electrode made of what?
Tungsten
A non-consumable tungsten electrode carries the arc while filler rod is added separately. TIG is slower and harder to master but ideal for thin stainless steel and aluminium.
Q 16Which shielding gas did Northrop's original 1941 TIG process use on magnesium aircraft parts?
Helium
Helium: Russell Meredith at Northrop devised the process in 1941 to weld the magnesium XP-56, and Linde sold it under the Heliarc name. Argon later became the usual shielding gas.
Q 17What is the melting point of the TIG-electrode metal, the highest of any element?
3,422 °C
Tungsten melts at 3,422 °C (6,192 °F), the highest melting point of any element. It also has the lowest vapour pressure and the highest tensile strength of any pure metal.
Q 18Which noble gas is the most common inert shielding gas in welding?
Argon
Argon is chemically inert under almost all conditions and forms no confirmed stable compounds at room temperature, which is what makes it ideal for shielding.
Q 19In submerged arc welding, what is the arc 'submerged' beneath?
A blanket of granular flux
The flux is a mix of lime, silica, manganese oxide and calcium fluoride that becomes conductive when molten. The first patent dates from 1935.
Q 20Who invented friction stir welding at TWI in 1991?
Wayne Thomas
Wayne Thomas devised it. A rotating non-consumable tool stirs the two pieces together in a solid state.
Q 24Thermite welding is most widely used to join what?
Railway rails
The rail ends are preheated to orange heat with a torch so the molten steel is not chilled during the pour.
Q 25What temperature is the usual dividing line between soldering and brazing?
450 °C
450 °C (840 °F) is the conventional boundary: below it the process is soldering, above it brazing. Both use a filler that melts below the base metal, unlike welding, which melts the parent metal.
Q 26In brazing, what draws the molten filler metal into the joint?
Capillary action
Capillary action pulls the molten filler into the gap; clearances of 0.03 to 0.08 mm give the best flow. Braze welding, by contrast, deposits filler without relying on capillary action.
Q 27Spot-welding electrodes are usually made from which low-resistance metal?
Copper
Copper-alloy electrodes conduct current well and carry off heat, so the metal melts only at the contact point between the sheets. Water cooling keeps the electrodes themselves from softening.
Q 28The modern welding helmet was first introduced in 1937 by which company?
Willson Products
Willson Products, a safety-equipment maker in Reading, Pennsylvania, introduced the modern welding helmet in 1937. Before that, welders relied on hand-held shields or simple goggles.
Q 29The first auto-darkening welding filter, Speedglas (1981), came from which country?
Sweden
Sweden: Hornell International of Gagnef launched the Speedglas LCD shutter in 1981, darkening the instant its sensors detect the arc. 3M bought the company in 2004.
Q 30The painful eye condition welders call 'arc eye' is medically known as what?
Photokeratitis
Photokeratitis is essentially sunburn of the cornea from ultraviolet light. Skiers and mountaineers get the same condition, called snow blindness, from glare off snow.