50 free Welding trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Until the end of the 19th century, what was the only process available for joining iron and steel?
Forge welding
Blacksmiths joined iron and steel by heating and hammering for millennia. The Iron Pillar of Delhi, from around 400 CE, was made this way.
Q 02The earliest known welding dates to which period?
The Bronze Age
Small gold boxes made with pressure-welded lap joints survive from that era. 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
He 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
He kept improving it for 15 years. His company later merged into General Electric.
Q 06Oxygen-acetylene welding was first developed in 1903 by engineers from which country?
France
Edmond Fouché and Charles Picard. Acetylene itself had been discovered by Edmund Davy in 1836.
Q 07An oxy-acetylene flame burns at roughly what temperature?
3,500 °C
That is about 6,300 °F, hotter than oxyhydrogen (2,800 °C) or propane-oxygen (about 2,250 °C).
Q 08What is the chemical formula of acetylene?
C2H2
Its systematic name is ethyne. 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
Kjellberg dipped iron wire in carbonates and silicates; Strohmenger used clay and lime. 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
The flux coating on the consumable electrode burns off to make shielding gas and slag. It still dominates maintenance and repair work.
Q 11In stick welding, what two protective by-products come from the disintegrating flux coating?
Shielding gas and slag
Both keep atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen out of the molten pool. The slag is chipped off afterwards.
Q 12MIG and MAG are subtypes of which process?
Gas metal arc welding
MIG uses inert gas, MAG uses an active gas like CO2. 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
The same year saw the debut of flux-cored arc welding. 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
The aluminothermic reaction needs no external power. It is the standard way to join railway rails; the Delaware and Hudson tested it in 1935.
It initially needed costly inert gas; the 1953 switch to carbon dioxide made welding steel with it economical.
Q 14The use of CO2 as a GMAW shielding atmosphere was developed in which year?
1953
It quickly caught on because it made welding steel far cheaper than pure argon or helium.
Q 15TIG welding uses an electrode made of what?
Tungsten
The electrode is non-consumable; filler is added separately. TIG is slower and harder to master but ideal for thin stainless and aluminium.
Q 16TIG welding was originally called Heliarc because early versions used which shielding gas?
Helium
Northrop engineers devised it in the early 1940s to weld the magnesium XP-56 aircraft. Argon is the usual choice today.
Q 17What is the melting point of the TIG-electrode metal, the highest of any element?
3,422 °C
That is 6,192 °F. It also has the lowest vapour pressure and highest tensile strength of any pure metal.
Q 18Which noble gas is the most common inert shielding gas in welding?
Argon
It is chemically inert under almost all conditions and forms no confirmed stable compounds at room temperature.
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
Both use a filler with a lower melting point than the base metal, unlike welding, which melts the parent metal itself.
Q 26In brazing, what draws the molten filler metal into the joint?
Capillary action
Clearances of 0.03 to 0.08 mm give the best results. Braze welding, by contrast, uses no capillary action.
Q 27Spot-welding electrodes are usually made from which low-resistance metal?
Copper
The heat comes from resistance to current at the contact point. An ordinary car can contain several thousand robot-made spot welds.
Q 28The modern welding helmet was first introduced in 1937 by which company?
Willson Products
The auto-darkening filter came much later: Sweden's Hornell International launched the Speedglas LCD shutter in 1981.
Q 29The first auto-darkening welding filter, Speedglas (1981), came from which country?
Sweden
Hornell International's LCD shutter darkens the instant sensors see the arc. The brand is now owned by 3M.
Q 30The painful eye condition welders call 'arc eye' is medically known as what?
Photokeratitis
It is essentially sunburn of the cornea from ultraviolet light, and skiers and mountaineers can get it from snow glare.