Q 01/05

The 'lead' in a pencil is actually made of what?

A) Charcoal sticks

B) Pressed coal dust

C) Powdered lead

D) Graphite and clay

Answer · why

D) Graphite and clay

It has never contained lead; the name stuck because 16th-century chemists thought the strange black mineral was a kind of lead ore.

Q 02/05

Which country's pure graphite find in the 1500s kicked off the pencil industry?

A) France

B) China

C) Germany

D) England

Answer · why

D) England

It lay in Borrowdale in Cumbria; the Crown took the mines over and even flooded them to stop theft, since graphite lined cannonball moulds.

Q 03/05

Which shape is the most common for a wooden pencil?

A) Triangular

B) Round

C) Hexagonal

D) Square

Answer · why

C) Hexagonal

Six flat sides stop it rolling off the desk.

Q 04/05

What colours are the ferrule (the metal band) on a classic Ticonderoga pencil?

A) Silver and red

B) Blue and gold

C) Black and white

D) Green and yellow

Answer · why

D) Green and yellow

The rest of the pencil is the familiar yellow, with a soft pink eraser on top.

Q 05/05

The word 'Crayola' combines the French word for chalk with a suffix meaning what?

A) Bright

B) Colourful

C) Oily

D) Little

Answer · why

C) Oily

Alice Binney, a former schoolteacher, coined it from craie plus 'ola' for oleaginous; the first Crayola crayons went on sale in June 1903.