Carbon Trivia
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105 free Carbon trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This carbon trivia quiz covers the element that makes life possible and shows up as everything from pencil lead to diamond. The easy questions handle the basics: its symbol and atomic number, how many bonds it forms, why graphite is soft and diamond is hard, and where the name comes from. The harder end gets into the details: the isotopes and how carbon-14 dating works, why no carbon was made in the Big Bang and how stars build it three helium nuclei at a time, the fullerenes that won a Nobel Prize, graphene, lonsdaleite and Q-carbon, Lavoisier burning a diamond to prove what it was, the Borrowdale graphite that made the first pencils, where kimberlite pipes are found, and why 'diamonds are forever' is technically untrue. Every answer was checked against the element's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our periodic table, chemistry, hydrogen and oxygen quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 105 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is carbon's atomic number?
6
6. That leaves four electrons in its outer shell, which is why carbon usually forms four bonds.
Q 02In diamond, each carbon atom's four bonds point to the corners of what shape?
Tetrahedron
Tetrahedron. That rigid network of strong bonds is why diamond is the hardest natural substance.
Q 03Coal formed mostly from the buried remains of what?
Ancient swamp plants
Ancient swamp plants. They rotted into peat, and millions of years of heat and pressure under buried sediment turned that peat into coal.
Q 04Carbon ranks where in abundance among elements in the universe by mass?
Fourth
Fourth. Only hydrogen, helium and one heavier element outrank it, yet almost none of that carbon was made in the Big Bang.
Q 05By mass, which element is more plentiful in the human body than carbon?
Oxygen
Oxygen. Water makes up over half the body's weight, and water is mostly oxygen by mass.
Q 06Which form of carbon traps impurities in gas masks and water filters?
Activated charcoal
Activated charcoal. It is riddled with tiny pores, and impurities stick to all of that inner surface.
Q 07Graphite gets its name from a Greek verb meaning what?
To write
To write. Thousands of years before it had that name, prehistoric potters in the Balkans painted their pots with it.
Q 08Graphite's carbon atoms bond in flat sheets; what holds those sheets together?
Van der Waals forces
Van der Waals forces. They are weak, so the sheets glide past each other, which is why graphite works as a dry lubricant.
Q 09Why is 'diamonds are forever' technically untrue?
They should slowly turn into graphite
They should slowly turn into graphite, because graphite, not diamond, is carbon's most stable form at everyday conditions.
Q 10What is a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms in a hexagonal lattice called?
Graphene
Graphene. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov pulled one-atom-thick flakes of it off graphite using ordinary adhesive tape.
Q 11Buckminsterfullerene was named after an architect famous for designing what?
Geodesic domes
Geodesic domes. The discoverers thought the molecule's cage of hexagons and pentagons looked like one of Buckminster Fuller's domes.
Q 12Which honour did Curl, Kroto and Smalley win for discovering fullerenes?
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The find set off a wave of research into other new forms of carbon.
Q 13How many carbon atoms make up buckminsterfullerene, the best-known buckyball?
60
60. Clusters of 60 atoms proved unusually stable, which led their discoverers to deduce a closed, highly symmetrical cage.
Q 21Which isotope did IUPAC adopt as the basis for atomic weights?
Carbon-12
Carbon-12. Every relative atomic mass on a periodic table is still measured against it.
Q 22Carbon nuclei are forged in stars by which fusion route?
The triple-alpha process
The triple-alpha process. Three helium nuclei must fuse almost at once, because the two-nucleus stepping stone, beryllium-8, falls apart instantly.
Q 23Why was no significant carbon created in the Big Bang?
It expanded and cooled too fast
It expanded and cooled too fast, so almost all the carbon around today was forged later, inside stars.
Q 14Which carbon allotrope, found in 1997, is ferromagnetic and among the lightest solids at about 2 kg per cubic metre?
Carbon nanofoam
Its atoms are strung together in a loose 3D web of six- and seven-membered rings.
Q 15How was Q-carbon first made?
By firing a laser pulse at amorphous soot
By firing a laser pulse at amorphous soot. The flash melts the carbon, which is then quenched so fast that the Q stands for 'quenched'.
Q 16Which material is the top candidate for the cable of a space elevator?
Carbon nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes. A Japanese builder has floated a nanotube space elevator by 2050, but the idea remains highly speculative.
Q 17What is the half-life of carbon-14?
About 5,700 years
About 5,700 years. Living things keep topping up their carbon-14, so the decay clock only starts once they die.
Q 18How is carbon-14 created?
Cosmic rays hitting nitrogen in the upper atmosphere
Cosmic rays hitting nitrogen in the upper atmosphere make it, and 1950s and 1960s nuclear bomb tests nearly doubled the amount in the air.
Q 19Which chemist developed radiocarbon dating?
Willard Libby
Willard Libby. To prove the method worked, his team tested it on ancient Egyptian artefacts whose ages were already known.
Q 20In 1988, radiocarbon labs in Arizona, Oxford and Zurich all tested samples from what?
The Shroud of Turin
The Shroud of Turin. Their tests dated its linen to between 1260 and 1390, centuries after the time of Jesus.
Q 24What is coal baked into, without air, to fuel iron-smelting blast furnaces?
Coke
Coke. It is strong enough not to be crushed by the ore piled above it, so hot gases can still rise through the furnace.
Q 25What colour does diatomic carbon, the gas that lights up many comets, glow when excited?
Green
Green. The gas can't last at room temperature, quickly linking up into bigger carbon molecules.
Q 26Which element sits directly below carbon in the periodic table?
Silicon
Silicon. It is a semiconductor, which is why most computer chips are built on it.
Q 27Carbon's ability to form long chains of carbon-carbon bonds is called what?
Catenation
Catenation. It lets carbon build the long backbones of fuels, plastics and the molecules of life.
Q 28Which chemist showed in 1772 that diamond is carbon by burning it?
Antoine Lavoisier
Antoine Lavoisier. His science was funded by a hated tax-collecting firm, and that job got him guillotined in the French Revolution.
Q 29Before Scheele's work, graphite had been widely thought to be a form of which metal?
Lead
Lead. That old confusion is why pencil cores are still called 'lead', though they hold none of the metal.
Q 30Which scientist, better known for his temperature scale, showed that iron becomes steel by absorbing a substance?
Réaumur
Réaumur. He also showed that some animals really can regrow limbs they have lost.