Not-So-Trivial Chemistry Trivia Quiz

Answer: Lithium

A member of the alkali metal group, lithium is the least-dense of all solid elements and the lightest of the metals. Highly reactive, lithium does not occur naturally on its own but, rather, in compounds such as lithium chloride.

Answer: Hydrogen

Discovered by Henry Cavendish in 1766 and named by French chemist Antoine Lavoisier in 1783, hydrogen makes up around 75% of all mass in the universe. Colourless, odourless and tasteless at standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is highly combustible. The 1937 Hindenburg airship explosion is an example of just how dangerous hydrogen can be.

Answer: Astatine

Only discovered in 1940, astatine is a very rare radioactive element whose name derives from a Greek word meaning "unstable". Even now, little is known about this element as it occurs only as a step in the radioactive decay of heavier elements. Estimates are that less than a single gram of astatine exits at any one time within the entire crust of the Earth. Astatine is thought likely to be metallic, with many similar properties to the next-heaviest of the halogens, iodine.

When this quiz was written in 2015, astatine was the heaviest halogen, but that seems likely to change in the next few years when elements 115 and 117 are confirmed. The artificially-created 117 will then become the heaviest of all the halogens.

Answer: Neon

A colourless, odourless, inert gas at normal temperature and pressure, neon is a one of the 'Noble gases'. Discovered by British chemists Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers in 1898, its name derives from the Greek word for "new".

Only hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon are more abundant than neon in the wider universe, although it is relatively scarce on Earth. Lighter than air, neon easily escapes from the atmosphere, which accounts for its rarity.

Answer: Brass

Man began to smelt metals from ore more than 5,000 years ago. Copper is relatively hard but, when combined with tin, it forms bronze, which is harder than either of its constituents. Tin, though, was relatively rare in many parts of the world, so zinc was often combined with copper instead, forming brass.

Pig iron is an extremely hard, but somewhat brittle, alloy made from iron and carbon. Solder is an alloy of tin and lead.

Answer: Flerovium

The artificial element flerovium is not found naturally and has only been created in laboratories. Highly radioactive and one of the 'super-heavy' elements, it was discovered in 1999 and named after the Russian nuclear physicist Georgy Flyorov. Found at the bottom of the 'p-block' on the right hand side of the periodic table, flerovium is the heaviest of the carbons.

Fluorine has the chemical symbol 'F', fermium is 'Fm' and Iron is 'Fe'.

Answer: Yellow

Easily cut with a knife and an excellent conductor of electricity, sodium is a soft, silver-coloured metal at standard room temperature and pressure. Increase the pressure and sodium turns first black and then goes transparent with a red hue. When sodium or its compounds are heated, though, they emit an intense yellow flame.

Knowing which chemicals produce which colours when heated is important for creators of firework displays. Red flames are produced by lithium and strontium, orange by calcium and blue by copper.

Answer: Iridium

Traveling from one end of the world to the other at the speed of the wind, Iris is a messenger of the gods who links them to humanity. One of the goddesses of the sea and the sky, she is the personification of the rainbow.

The element named for Iris is the most corrosion-resistant metal known to man, iridium. This brittle, silver-white and very hard member of the platinum group was discovered in 1803 by English chemist Smithson Tennant, who also discovered osmium.

Answer: Iodine

Discovered in 1811 by French chemist Bernard Courtois, iodine is a bluish-black colour as a solid, but it produces a fairly smelly violet gas, hence its name, which comes from the Greek for violet or purple.

A member of the halogens, iodine is found on Earth mostly in the oceans and in brine pools, where it is biologically significant. It is the heaviest element that is used in biological functions with the qualified exception of tungsten, which is used by some species of bacteria.

Answer: Argon

Discovered by John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, and Sir William Ramsay in 1894, argon makes up only 0.93% of the Earth's atmosphere. However, that still make it more than 20 times as abundant as the fourth-most common gas, carbon dioxide, and more than 500 times as abundant as neon, the next most common noble gas.

Argon is highly resistant to bonding with other elements: whether as a solid, a liquid or a gas, it is colourless, odourless, non-toxic and non-flammable, hence its name.