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100 Tricky Science Trivia Questions—With Answers
Updated on Mar. 07, 2025
Easy science trivia
1. Question: What is the largest planet in our solar system?
Answer: Jupiter
2. Question: What is the fastest animal on land?
Answer: The cheetah
3. Question: What are the three layers of the Earth?
Answer: Crust, mantle and core
4. Question: How many elements are on the periodic table?
Answer: 118
5. Question: What do you call an animal that eats a variety of other organisms, including plants, animals and fungi?
Answer: An omnivore
6. Question: What do you call the study of weather, climate and the atmosphere?
Answer: Meteorology
7. Question: How many colors are in the rainbow?
Answer: Seven: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (ROYGBIV)
8. Question: What is the study of fungi called?
Answer: Mycology
9. Question: Which is the most abundant element in the universe?
Answer: Hydrogen
10. Question: What do you call a volcano that’s not currently erupting?
Answer: Dormant
11. Question: What element is the most commonly used to create nuclear energy?
Answer: Uranium
12. Question: How do you determine the age of a tree?
Answer: Count its growth rings
13. Question: What do you call molten rock before it has erupted?
Answer: Magma
14. Question: What country has the most tornadoes?
Answer: The United States
15. Question: Who is credited with coming up with the theory of evolution?
Answer: Charles Darwin
Hard science trivia
16. Question: Are the sun and moon the same size?
Answer: No. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but because it’s 400 times farther away, both appear to be the same size in the sky.
17. Question: What element did Joseph Priestley discover in 1774?
Answer: Oxygen
18. Question: How many bones do sharks have?
Answer: Zero
19. Question: What does a Geiger counter measure?
Answer: Radiation
20. Question: What are the most common elements in the human body?
Answer: By mass, about 96% of our bodies are made of four key elements: oxygen (65%), carbon (18.5%), hydrogen (9.5%) and nitrogen (3.3%).
21. Question: What is the largest desert in the world?
Answer: Antarctica
22. Question: Roughly how long does it take for the sun’s light to reach Earth?
Answer: 8 minutes and 20 seconds
23. Question: Which is the only rock that floats?
Answer: Pumice
24. Question: How long is the memory of a goldfish?
Answer: At least six months
25. Question: What is the name of the red pigment found in vertebrates that functions in oxygen transport?
Answer: Hemoglobin
26. Question: What does a conchologist collect?
Answer: Seashells
27. Question: What is the splitting of atomic nuclei called?
Answer: Fission
28. Question: What scale is used to measure the hardness of minerals?
Answer: The Mohs’ scale
29. Question: What is it called when a solid changes directly into a gas?
Answer: Sublimation
Science trivia questions about chemistry
30. Question: What is hydrogen oxide?
Answer: Water
31. Question: What is the most abundant element in the Earth’s crust?
Answer: Oxygen
32. Question: Which element on the periodic table was named after physicist Albert Einstein?
Answer: Einsteinium (Es)
33. Question: What is the newest element on the periodic table?
Answer: Oganesson (Og)
34. Question: At what temperature are Celsius and Fahrenheit equal?
Answer: Minus 40 degrees
35. Question: When was the modern periodic table (with atomic numbers) introduced?
Answer: 1912
36. Question: What do you call the elements helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, radon and oganesson?
Answer: Noble gasses
37. Question: What is the symbol for iron on the periodic table?
Answer: Fe
38. Question: When was the first Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded?
Answer: 1901
39. Question: What do you call the subatomic particles that make up protons and neutrons?
Answer: Quarks
40. Question: What element is a diamond composed of?
Answer: Carbon
41. Question: Who is considered the father of modern chemistry?
Answer: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
42. Question: What element is named after the Greek word for greenish-yellow?
Answer: Chlorine
43. Question: Atoms of the same chemical element but with different atomic masses are known as what?
Answer: Isotopes
Science questions about space
44. Question: If it were possible to fly a plane to Pluto, how long would it take?
Answer: 800 years
45. Question: How many stars are in the universe?
Answer: At least a billion trillion—more than all of the grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches
46. Question: What color is the sunset on Mars?
Answer: Blue
47. Question: At what speed does our solar system orbit the Milky Way galaxy?
Answer: About 515,000 mph
48. Question: How long does it take our solar system to complete one orbit around the galactic center?
Answer: About 230 million years
49. Question: What is the hottest planet in our solar system?
Answer: Venus (even though Mercury is closer to the Sun)
50. Question: Which two planets have no moons?
Answer: Mercury and Venus
51. Question: When was our solar system formed?
Answer: Approximately 4.6 billion years ago
52. Question: What shape is the moon?
Answer: The moon is shaped like a lemon.
53. Question: How many times has Neptune orbited the Sun since its discovery?
Answer: Since its discovery in 1846, Neptune has made one full orbit, which it finished in 2011.
54. Question: What is the coldest planet in our solar system?
Answer: Uranus (even though Neptune is the farthest from the Sun)
55. Question: How long would it take to walk to the moon?
Answer: Nine years
56. Question: How long would it take to drive a car (at 70 mph) to the nearest star?
Answer: More than 356 billion years
57. Question: How long does it take for the International Space Station to orbit the Earth?
Answer: About 90 minutes
58. Question: Who was the first American woman in space?
Answer: Sally Ride
59. Question: Between which two planets does the asteroid belt lie?
Answer: Jupiter and Mars
60. Question: What planet is closest in size to Earth?
Answer: Venus
61. Question: What is the average distance between Earth and the moon?
Answer: 238,855 miles
Science trivia questions about animals
62. Question: How long was the largest blue whale ever measured?
Answer: She was 110′ 17″.
63. Question: Which animal did Australia go to “war” with in 1932?
Answer: The emu
64. Question: What is the largest mammal in North America?
Answer: Bison
65. Question: What animal kills the most humans each year?
Answer: The mosquito
66. Question: What are sea monkeys?
Answer: Brine shrimp
67. Question: How long can beavers hold their breath underwater?
Answer: 15 minutes
68. Question: What do you call a group of flamingos?
Answer: A flamboyance
69. Question: What do you call a female elephant?
Answer: A cow
70. Question: What animal has the longest lifespan?
Answer: The glass sponge
71. Question: What is the smallest mammal on Earth?
Answer: The Etruscan shrew
72. Question: How many bones are in a giraffe’s neck?
Answer: Seven
Science questions about water
73. Question: How much of the Earth’s surface is covered in water?
Answer: About 71%
74. Question: How much of the Earth’s water is stored in oceans?
Answer: About 96.5%
75. Question: Where is most of the freshwater on Earth located?
Answer: About 68% is in glaciers and ice caps, mainly in the polar regions and in Greenland.
76. Question: How much of the Earth’s water supply is saltwater?
Answer: More than 96%
77. Question: What provides nearly 90% of the water in the Earth’s atmosphere?
Answer: Evaporation from oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and streams
78. Question: How much water is cycled through Earth’s atmosphere each year?
Answer: Enough for the entire amount of water in the air to be removed and replenished nearly 40 times
79. Question: How long can a human live without water?
Answer: About one week
80. Question: How much water do Americans use at home each day?
Answer: About 50 gallons
81. Question: What is the pH of water?
Answer: Water has a pH of 7, which is neither basic nor acidic.
82. Question: How much does water weigh?
Answer: 62.416 pounds per cubic foot at 32 degrees Fahrenheit; 61.998 pounds per cubic foot at 100 degrees Fahrenheit
83. Question: What is the deepest part of the ocean?
Answer: The Challenger Deep, which is located inside the Mariana Trench
84. Question: What is the world’s largest Hydroelectric Power Plant?
Answer: Three Gorges Dam
Science questions about health and medicine
85. Question: What is the largest organ in the human body?
Answer: Skin
86. Question: What is the rarest blood type?
Answer: Rhnull
87. Question: How much blood is in the human body?
Answer: It depends on the size of the person, but a 150- to 180-pound adult will have approximately 1.2 to 1.5 gallons of blood in their body.
88. Question: Which two scientists created the first polio vaccines?
Answer: Jonas Salk (shot) and Albert Sabin (oral)
89. Question: How many bones are in the human body?
Answer: Adults have between 206 and 213 bones.
90. Question: What is the heaviest internal organ in the human body?
Answer: The liver
91. Question: How many skin cells does a person shed every minute?
Answer: 30,000
92. Question: How many taste buds are on the human tongue?
Answer: The average adult has anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 taste buds.
93. Question: How long is a human’s large intestine?
Answer: About 5 feet long
94. Question: What is the average weight of a full-term newborn baby?
Answer: About 7 pounds
95. Question: What does DNA stand for?
Answer: Deoxyribonucleic acid
96. Question: What does the gallbladder secrete?
Answer: Bile
97. Question: How many chambers make up the human heart?
Answer: Four
98. Question: The first vaccine was developed for which disease?
Answer: Smallpox
99. Question: How many vertebrae are in the human spine?
Answer: 33
100. Question: Where on the human body are the most sweat glands?
Answer: The palms of the hands and soles of the feet
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