How to Make... Trivia Quiz

Answer: Steel

The Bessemer process is named after Henry Bessemer who patented it in 1856 and was one of the first ways of mass producing steel in an inexpensive way. The process blows air through molten pig iron which removes impurities as the air reacts with the impurities and forms oxides.

The oxides are then either released as gasses or form a solid known as slag. The Bessemer process is now obsolete as it has been replaced by a similar but more effective process using oxygen gas rather than air.

Answer: Ammonia

The Haber process is used to create ammonia and is named after German scientist Fritz Haber who created the process in the early 20th century. Haber won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the process to synthesise ammonia. The process uses nitrogen from the air which reacts with hydrogen using an iron catalyst to create ammonia.

Answer: Sodium carbonate

The Solvay process is a means of mass producing sodium carbonate from brine and limestone. Sodium carbonate is used to make soaps and detergents as well as in the manufacture of paper and glass. The process was developed by Ernest Solvay, a Belgian chemist, in the 1860s.

Answer: Aluminium

The Bayer process was developed by Carl Josef Bayer and patented in 1888. The Bayer process produces aluminium, in the form of aluminium oxide, from bauxite the metal's primary ore. Bauxite is heated under pressure with sodium hydroxide which dissolves the aluminium.

After filtering and cooling, the dissolved aluminium is then crystalized to create aluminium oxide crystals which can then be further refined to produce pure aluminium.

Answer: Bromine

The Dow process was developed by the American chemist and industrialist Herbert Henry Dow who was the founder of the Dow Chemical Company. He patented the Dow process in 1891 which produces bromine for industrial use by extracting it from brine.

Answer: Silver and Gold

The Parkes process is used in the production of silver and gold bullion. The process removes the metals from lead with which they are often found as a naturally occurring alloy. The process uses the metal zinc, which will not mix with lead and in which silver and gold are much more soluble.

This means the precious metals leave the lead and combine with the zinc. The zinc mixture is then heated until the zinc vaporizes leaving behind pure silver and/or gold. The process is named after Alexander Parkes an English scientist who patented it in 1850.

Answer: Sulfuric acid

The contact process is used to create sulfuric acid for industrial use. The process creates sulfur trioxide which can be mixed with water to create sulfuric acid. To make the sulfur trioxide, sulfur dioxide is combined with oxygen in the presence of a catalyst.

The catalyst was originally platinum but vanadium oxide is now used as it does not react with impurities that might be found in sulfur.

Answer: Heavy water

Heavy water is the term for deuterium oxide, with deuterium being an isotope of hydrogen, which is used as a coolant and moderator in some nuclear reactors. The process was developed independently by the German scientist Karl-Hermann Geib and the American Jerome S. Spevack in the 1940s and is named after the Girdler company who created the first American plant to use the process.

Answer: Petroleum products

Cracking is the term used for the process by which long chain hydrocarbons are broken into simpler molecules which are more useful. There are a number of different ways of cracking which make use of heat, steam or fluid to break up the molecules. Fluid cracking is the most common form used for producing petrol (or gasoline).

Answer: Nickel

The Mond process is designed to extract and purify the metal nickel. It is named after Ludwig Mond, a German born British chemist who developed the process and established the Mond Nickel Company to produce nickel using the process. The process reacts impure nickel with carbon monoxide to form nickel carbonyl which is free from the impurities, this is then heated until the mixture decomposes into what is now pure nickel and carbon monoxide.