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Science Trivia Questions for Kids and Families
Thirty science trivia questions with answers, from easy to hard, covering atoms, electricity, energy, light and plants. A fun warm-up for family game night or the classroom.
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Easy science trivia questions for kids
1.What are the three states of matter we see every day?
Solid, liquid and gas. Plasma, found in lightning and stars, is often called the fourth state.
2.What is the process plants use to make food from sunlight?
Photosynthesis. Photosynthesis also releases the oxygen we breathe.
3.What is the chemical symbol for oxygen?
O. Oxygen gas has no color, but liquid oxygen is pale blue.
4.What is it called when light bounces off a surface, like a mirror?
Reflection. Smooth, shiny surfaces like still water bounce light back neatly, while rough surfaces scatter it in all directions.
5.Which scientific tool uses lenses to make tiny things look much bigger?
A microscope. Dutch tradesman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek made over 500 of them and was among the first to see living bacteria.
6.What force slows things down when two surfaces rub or slide against each other?
Friction. Friction also turns some of the energy of motion into heat.
7.What is it called when liquid water turns into water vapor, a gas?
Evaporation. The reverse is condensation, like the drops that form on the outside of a glass of ice water.
8.What must an object do to make a sound?
Vibrate (shake back and forth very quickly). Sound can't travel through the vacuum of space, because there's nothing there to carry it.
9.Which part of a plant soaks up water from the soil?
The roots. Leaves let water vapor out into the air through tiny pores called stomata.
10.What happens to sugar when you stir it into warm water until you can't see it anymore?
It dissolves. The sugar hasn't vanished: it has mixed into the water to make what scientists call a solution.
11.Which lighter-than-air gas is used to make balloons and airships float?
Helium. Helium is the second-lightest element, after hydrogen.
12.In a thunderstorm, why do you see the lightning before you hear the thunder?
Light travels much faster than sound. Thunder takes about 5 seconds to travel a mile, so count the seconds and divide by 5 to estimate the miles.
Medium science trivia questions
13.What is the center of an atom called?
The nucleus. Almost all of an atom's mass is packed into its nucleus.
14.Which simple machine is basically a ramp?
An inclined plane. Other simple machines include the lever, the pulley, and the wheel and axle.
15.What kind of energy does a moving object have?
Kinetic energy. Stored energy, like in a stretched rubber band, is called potential energy.
16.What happens to most materials when they are heated?
They expand. That is why bridges have small gaps called expansion joints.
17.What do we call a material, like copper, that lets electricity flow through it easily?
A conductor. Materials that block electricity are called insulators, like the plastic coating on household wires.
18.According to a famous story, which ancient Greek thinker shouted 'Eureka!' after stepping into his bath?
Archimedes. 'Eureka' means 'I have found it!' The overflowing water gave him an idea for testing a king's gold crown.
19.What is the green pigment in plant leaves called?
Chlorophyll. It reflects green light, which is why most leaves look green.
20.In 1665, Robert Hooke looked at thin slices of cork and named the tiny boxes he saw. What did he call them?
Cells. The boxes reminded him of the small rooms, called cells, in a monastery.
21.Which French scientist discovered that gently heating a drink kills the germs that spoil it, a process now used to keep milk fresh?
Louis Pasteur. The process is called pasteurization, after him. Pasteur was born in Dole, France, in 1822.
22.Which naturalist's famous book, On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859?
Charles Darwin. All 1,250 copies of the first printing were ordered by the day it came out.
Hard science trivia questions for adults
23.On the pH scale, which number means neutral, neither acidic nor basic?
7. The scale runs from 0 to 14. Normal rain is slightly acidic, at about 5.6.
24.What does the abbreviation DNA stand for?
Deoxyribonucleic acid. Its two strands twist around each other like a ladder, in a shape called a double helix.
25.What is 0 on the kelvin temperature scale called?
Absolute zero. It equals -273.15 degrees Celsius, or -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit.
26.What is it called when a solid turns straight into a gas without melting first?
Sublimation. Snow and ice can vanish this way on sunny days with dry winds.
27.Which Italian scientist built the world's first battery, announced in 1800?
Alessandro Volta. His pile stacked discs of two different metals, like zinc and copper, separated by paper or rags soaked in salt water.
28.Which 19th-century monk did thousands of experiments with pea plants?
Gregor Mendel. His results showed general patterns for how traits are passed from parents to their offspring.
29.What do chemists call a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction without being used up?
A catalyst. Enzymes in living things are catalysts, and almost all of them are proteins.
30.Which German scientist discovered X-rays in 1895?
Wilhelm Roentgen. In 1901 he became the very first person to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Ways to use these science questions
Use the easy round as a five-minute warm-up before a science class or homeschool lab, then let older students wrestle with pH, sublimation and catalysts. The questions pair well with simple kitchen-table experiments: read the evaporation and sublimation ones while ice cubes sit out on a plate, or the roots and chlorophyll ones while you water a houseplant. During a thunderstorm, stay indoors and try the lightning question, then count the seconds after the next flash together. Science-fair teams can quiz each other while they wait to present, and families can split into Team Pasteur and Team Volta.
Play Science trivia together
Room Trivia has a whole science category with different questions: four answers to pick from, points for speed, and a scoreboard. Put it on a TV or laptop and everyone answers on their own phone. Free, with no app and no account.