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47 free Concrete trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This concrete trivia quiz covers the most-manufactured material on Earth, from Nabataean cisterns and the Pantheon's dome to the Three Gorges Dam. The easy questions handle the basics: what concrete is made of, how it hardens, why it needs steel, where the name Portland comes from and which Roman building still holds the dome record. From there it moves through the pioneers Smeaton, Aspdin, Monier, Coignet and Freyssinet, plus clinker, gypsum, fly ash, admixtures and the slump test. The harder half is for engineers and curious builders: Abrams' law, the seawater chemistry of Roman concrete, air entrainment trade-offs, tremies and bagwork, pervious and bacterial concretes, cold-weather placement, the cement industry's CO2 split between fuel and calcination, and the world records for pours and pumping. If you have played our engineering or inventions quizzes, this is the deep dive on one material. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry for concrete before publishing.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after what?
Water
Only water is consumed in greater quantity than concrete, which is the most widely used building material on Earth and, by mass, the most-manufactured material of any kind.
Q 02What are the two basic components of concrete?
Aggregate bound by a cement
Concrete is aggregate bound by a cement: sand and gravel held together by a paste of cement and water, usually Portland cement, that hardens around them.
Q 03What is the chemical process by which cement sets and hardens into a solid?
Hydration
Hydration is the reaction between cement and water that forms calcium silicate hydrate; it is exothermic, so ambient temperature affects how fast concrete sets.
Q 04How does mortar, used to bond bricks, differ from concrete?
It contains only fine aggregates
Mortar contains only fine aggregates, sand bound by cement or lime with no gravel, which keeps it workable enough to spread between bricks, blocks and tiles.
Q 05The word 'concrete' comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Compact or condensed
Concrete comes from Latin concretus, 'compact or condensed', the perfect passive participle of concrescere, 'to grow together'.
Q 06Concrete floors dating to roughly 1400-1200 BC were found in the royal palace of which Greek site?
Tiryns
Concrete floors were found in the royal palace at Tiryns, the Mycenaean citadel in the Argolid; the Assyrian Jerwan Aqueduct of 688 BC later used waterproof concrete.
Q 07Which desert traders pioneered concrete-like materials and kept their waterproof cisterns secret?
The Nabataeans
The Nabataeans, whose capital was Petra, used hydraulic lime by about 700 BC and built mortar kilns in southern Syria and northern Jordan; hidden cisterns let them thrive in the desert.
Q 08What did the Romans call their concrete?
Opus caementicium
Opus caementicium was the Roman name for concrete, from caementa, the rubble aggregate bound in lime mortar; the word survives in 'cement'.
Q 09Which Roman building has the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome?
The Pantheon
The Pantheon's dome, completed under Hadrian around 126 AD, spans 43.3 metres; its concrete grows lighter toward the oculus, with pumice aggregate in the upper rings.
Q 10What volcanic ingredient gives Roman concrete its remarkable durability and resistance to seawater?
Pozzolana ash
Pozzolana ash, volcanic ash from around Pozzuoli near Naples, reacts with lime and seawater to form aluminous tobermorite crystals that strengthen the concrete over centuries.
Q 11What technique has been proposed as the source of Roman concrete's 'self-healing' ability?
Hot mixing that leaves lime clasts
The lime clasts can dissolve and recrystallise to fill cracks.
Q 12Which Roman treatise, rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1414, contained a description of Roman cement?
De architectura by Vitruvius
Vitruvius's De architectura, the only complete architectural treatise to survive from antiquity, describes Roman lime mortars and cements; its rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini in 1414 inspired Renaissance architects such as Alberti.
Q 13Which French waterway linking the Atlantic and the Mediterranean was built using concrete in 1670?
Q 21What difficult-to-dispose-of waste is the most common alternative fuel for cement kilns?
Used tyres
The kilns' extreme temperatures burn even awkward fuels completely.
Q 22According to Abrams' law, what does a lower water-to-cement ratio produce?
Stronger, more durable concrete
Abrams' law, stated by Duff Abrams in 1918, says a lower water-to-cement ratio gives stronger, more durable concrete; surplus water leaves pores behind as it evaporates.
Q 23Fly ash, a common mineral admixture, is a by-product of what?
Coal-fired power plants
Canal du Midi
The Canal du Midi, built by Pierre-Paul Riquet between 1666 and 1681 from Toulouse to the Mediterranean, used concrete in its works; the Canal Saint-Martin is a 19th-century Paris canal.
Q 14John Smeaton pioneered hydraulic lime in concrete while building a light on which rocks off Devon in the 1750s?
Eddystone
Smeaton's Tower was the third Eddystone Lighthouse.
Q 15Who patented Portland cement in 1824?
Joseph Aspdin
Joseph Aspdin, a Leeds bricklayer, patented Portland cement on 21 October 1824; his son William later produced the harder-fired version closer to the modern material.
Q 16Why did Aspdin name his cement after Portland?
It resembled the island's famous quarried stone
Portland stone was quarried in Dorset, England.
Q 17Who is credited with inventing reinforced concrete in 1849?
Joseph Monier
Joseph Monier, a Parisian gardener, made iron-reinforced concrete flowerpots in 1849 and patented the idea in 1867; he built the first reinforced concrete bridge at Chazelet in 1875.
Q 18Who built the first reinforced concrete house, in 1853?
François Coignet
François Coignet built the first iron-reinforced concrete house in 1853 in Saint-Denis, near Paris; steel reinforcement followed with G. A. Wayss in the 1880s.
Q 19Which French engineer patented prestressed concrete on 2 October 1928?
Eugène Freyssinet
Eugène Freyssinet patented prestressed concrete in 1928; tensioned steel tendons keep the concrete in compression so it resists cracking under bending loads.
Q 20Portland cement is made by heating limestone with clay or shale and grinding the resulting product with what?
Gypsum
Gypsum is ground in with the kiln product to supply sulfate that slows the early setting reaction, giving crews time to place and finish the concrete.
Ground blast-furnace slag comes from steelmaking and silica fume from electric arc furnaces.
Q 24Each 1% of entrained air in concrete may reduce its compressive strength by roughly how much?
5%
Roughly 5% of compressive strength is lost for each 1% of entrained air, yet the microscopic bubbles give freezing water room to expand, so air entrainment greatly reduces freeze-thaw damage.
Q 25Why is calcium chloride, an effective accelerator, prohibited in some countries?
It corrodes steel reinforcement
Nitrates are used instead even though they work less well.
Q 26What is asphalt concrete commonly called in the UK and Ireland?
Tarmac
In the UK and Ireland asphalt concrete is loosely called tarmac, after Edgar Hooley's 1902 tar-macadam patent; North Americans say blacktop or pavement.
Q 27Pervious or 'no-fines' concrete contains what percentage of interconnected air voids?
15 to 25 percent
Pervious concrete has 15 to 25 percent interconnected voids because it is made with little or no sand; rain drains through it into the soil, recharging aquifers instead of running off.
Q 28Concrete resists crushing loads well but is weak under which kind of stress?
Tension
That is why steel rebar, strong in tension, is embedded in it.
Q 29Which Swiss engineer designed the Salginatobel Bridge, a 1930 reinforced concrete arch?
Robert Maillart
Robert Maillart designed the Salginatobel Bridge near Schiers, a 90-metre three-hinged reinforced concrete arch completed in 1930 and later named an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
Q 30Which dam used a network of cooling pipes between concrete placements to stop its mass concrete overheating?
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam's builders embedded nearly 600 miles of one-inch pipe carrying refrigerated water through the blocks; a single mass pour would otherwise have taken more than a century to cool.