Batteries Trivia
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49 free Batteries trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Batteries trivia for science teachers, pub quizzers, gadget lovers and anyone who has ever wondered why the remote takes AAAs. The quiz starts with Benjamin Franklin borrowing an artillery word for his Leyden jars and Alessandro Volta stacking copper, zinc and brine-soaked paper in 1800, then follows the Daniell cell that powered the telegraph, Planté's rechargeable lead-acid battery of 1859, Leclanché's cell, Gassner's dry cell and Jungner's nickel-cadmium. It then covers the alkaline battery Lewis Urry built for Eveready in the 1950s, the lithium-ion story from Whittingham and Goodenough to Yoshino and Sony's 1991 launch, the 2019 Nobel Prize and its 97-year-old laureate, plus how cells actually work: anodes and cathodes, electrolytes, why lithium cells give three volts, self-discharge, memory effect, and the biggest batteries on Earth. There are questions on the Baghdad Battery, Duracell, the Energizer name, button-cell safety and the EU's cadmium ban. Roughly a third are easy and the rest climb steadily. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Samsung phone was recalled and scrapped in 2016 after its lithium-ion batteries began catching fire?
Galaxy Note 7
The Galaxy Note 7 kept catching fire even after Samsung swapped the first batch for handsets it had declared safe, so production ended about two months after launch and many airlines banned the phone from flights.
Q 02Which two metals did Volta stack, separated by brine-soaked paper, in his original pile?
Copper and zinc
Copper and zinc discs each add only a little voltage per pair, which is why Volta piled them high: the taller the stack, the stronger the shock it gave.
Q 03Who is credited with first using the word 'battery' for electrical apparatus, borrowing the military term for a row of guns?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin linked a set of glass capacitors to charge and fire together and named it after an artillery battery; the name stuck, though his apparatus only stored electricity and generated none.
Q 04Whose experiments on frogs' legs in the 1780s sparked the argument that led Volta to his invention?
Luigi Galvani
Luigi Galvani believed the twitching came from 'animal electricity' inside the frog; Volta argued that the two metals touching it made the current, and built his pile to prove it.
Q 05While a battery is supplying power, electrons leave it through the negative terminal, which is known as what?
The anode
The anode is the electrode that gives up electrons, which makes it the negative end of a battery in use; makers mark the opposite end, the cathode, with the familiar plus sign.
Q 06What is the term for a single-use battery whose electrode materials are irreversibly changed during discharge?
Primary
Primary cells drain themselves far more slowly than older rechargeables, so an alkaline battery can lie in a drawer for years and still work the moment it is needed.
Q 07What is the approximate nominal voltage of both alkaline and zinc-carbon cells?
1.5 volts
1.5 volts is set by the zinc and manganese dioxide reaction rather than by the size of the cell, so AAA, AA, C and D batteries all deliver it and differ only in how long they last.
Q 08Which oil giant funded the 1970s research in which Stanley Whittingham built the first working lithium battery?
Exxon
Exxon, fearing the oil would run out, hired leading researchers and let them study anything except petroleum; it dropped Whittingham's battery when the oil price collapsed in the early 1980s.
Q 09Who invented lead-acid batteries in 1859, the first kind that could be recharged by reversing the current?
Gaston Planté
Gaston Planté rolled two lead sheets into a spiral in acid and found that passing current back through them restored the charge; batteries built on the same reaction are still in wide use today.
Q 10What gas does a lead-acid battery give off during overcharging, which is why it needs ventilation?
Hydrogen
Hydrogen bubbles off, along with oxygen, when overcharging splits the water in the acid; the mixture is explosive, so one spark near the vents can blow the casing apart.
Q 11William Grove, whose 1839 nitric-acid cell powered early American telegraphs, is better remembered as a pioneer of which technology?
The fuel cell
The fuel cell grew from Grove's 'gas battery', which made electricity by combining two gases into water; the idea then lay almost unused until the space programme took it up in the 1960s.
Q 12Which French engineer's 1860s zinc-manganese dioxide cell led to the modern dry cell?
Georges Leclanché
Georges Leclanché's cell was an instant hit for telegraphs and electric bells, but it tired quickly: on early telephones a long call could drain it until the voices faded.
Q 13What did Carl Gassner mix into the ammonium chloride electrolyte to turn it into a paste for his 1886 dry cell?
Q 21Whittingham, Goodenough and Yoshino shared which 2019 Nobel Prize for developing the lithium-ion battery?
Chemistry
Chemistry was the category, and the committee's verdict was that the three had 'created a rechargeable world', putting the same battery in everything from mobile phones to laptops.
Q 22Which Boeing airliner was grounded worldwide in 2013 after its lithium-ion batteries overheated and caught fire?
The 787 Dreamliner
The 787 Dreamliner's entire fleet of 50 was grounded after a battery burned on a parked jet in Boston and another failed in flight over Japan nine days later, forcing an emergency landing.
Q 23What process, in which lithium ions slip reversibly into a host like graphite, underlies the lithium-ion battery?
Intercalation
Plaster of Paris
Plaster of Paris bound the liquid into a paste, and Gassner sealed it inside a metal can that doubled as an electrode, the same basic layout as today's zinc-carbon batteries.
Q 14National Carbon, which sold the first mass-market dry cell in 1896, later adopted which brand name after a 1914 merger?
Eveready
Eveready was shortened from the American Ever Ready Company, which National Carbon absorbed in 1914; its founder stayed on as president and the name went onto National Carbon's batteries.
Q 15Which type of rechargeable battery did Sweden's Waldemar Jungner invent in 1899?
Nickel-cadmium
Nickel-cadmium relied on costly cadmium, so Jungner also tried iron in its place but gave up on it, leaving Thomas Edison to develop nickel-iron two years later.
Q 16Which decrease in capacity can NiCd cells show if repeatedly recharged in the same pattern?
Memory effect
Memory effect got its name from an aerospace NiCd battery that computers drained to exactly the same point on every cycle; the cells then behaved as if the unused capacity had been forgotten.
Q 17What electrolyte gives the alkaline battery its name?
Potassium hydroxide
Potassium hydroxide is a strong alkali, where zinc-carbon cells use an acidic electrolyte; when an old battery leaks, it reacts with carbon dioxide in the air to form the feathery white crust.
Q 18Lewis Urry sold his bosses on the alkaline battery in the 1950s by racing a pair of what around the canteen?
Toy cars
Toy cars made the case: the one carrying Urry's new alkaline cell kept running long after its rival with an ordinary battery had stopped, and his managers were won over.
Q 19Which Japanese electronics company put the first commercial lithium-ion battery on sale in 1991?
Sony
Sony built its battery on a design by Asahi Kasei's Akira Yoshino, and the effect was a revolution in electronics: mobile phones shrank and computers became truly portable.
Q 20Which cathode material did John Goodenough introduce in 1980, the key to later commercial cells?
Lithium cobalt oxide
Lithium cobalt oxide almost doubled the voltage of Whittingham's earlier cell, to about four volts; his university declined to patent it, so Goodenough earned no royalties from the batteries it made possible.
Intercalation leaves the host's structure intact as the ions slide in and out, which is why the cell survives charge after charge; Whittingham pioneered it during the 1970s oil crisis.
Q 24What speeds up the slow loss of charge in a battery sitting unused on a shelf?
Heat
Heat speeds up self-discharge, the slow chemical reactions that drain a cell with nothing connected, so a battery left in a hot car fades faster than one kept somewhere cool.
Q 25Sulphation, which ruins car batteries left flat for too long, is the build-up of hard crystals of which compound?
Lead sulphate
Lead sulphate forms on the plates every time the battery discharges and normally dissolves on recharging; left flat for weeks, the soft deposit hardens into crystals that no charger can shift.
Q 26What does the initialism SLI stand for on a car battery?
Starting, Lighting, Ignition
Starting, lighting, ignition batteries are built for one brief, huge burst to crank the engine, after which the alternator tops them up, so they are only ever slightly discharged.
Q 27Wilhelm König suggested the ancient 'Baghdad Battery', a clay jar holding a copper tube and an iron rod, was used for what?
Electroplating
Electroplating gold onto silver was König's guess, but no electroplated object from the period has ever been found, and archaeologists think such jars more likely held sacred scrolls.
Q 28Duracell's name is a shortened form of which phrase?
'Durable cell'
'Durable cell' was shortened into a brand name in the 1960s by a company that had built its reputation making long-life batteries for the military.
Q 29Which conglomerate took over Duracell in 2016 by handing back its Procter & Gamble shares in exchange?
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway paid no cash: Warren Buffett's firm handed back about $4.7 billion of P&G stock and received the whole battery business in return.
Q 30The firm that became Duracell made its name in the Second World War supplying the US military with which type of battery?
Mercury
Mercury cells, devised by Samuel Ruben in 1942 at the army's request, held a steady voltage for years on the shelf and went into walkie-talkies and metal detectors; their toxicity later got them banned in many countries.