Dental & Dentist Trivia
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180 free Dental & Dentist trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
87 free Dental & Dentist trivia questions with answers. This dental trivia quiz is for dental offices, hygiene classes, National Dentist's Day, or anyone who has ever wondered whether George Washington's teeth were really wooden (they were not). It covers the mouth itself - how many baby and adult teeth we grow, what enamel, dentin and pulp actually are, why wisdom teeth got their name and which bacterium does most of the damage - and then the history: Pierre Fauchard's 1728 treatise, the world's first dental college, the first woman to graduate as a dentist, the Hartford dentist who discovered anesthesia and never patented it, and the Michigan city where fluoridated water was first tested. There is lighter material too: the tooth fairy's first appearance in a Chicago newspaper, Spain's tooth mouse Ratoncito Perez, striped toothpaste, the first electric toothbrush, shark and narwhal teeth, and Paul Revere's turn as a forensic dentist. About a third of the questions are easy enough for kids in a waiting room; the rest climb to questions that will make a hygienist pause. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 180 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many permanent (adult) teeth does a person usually have?
32
32 adult teeth include four wisdom teeth, which often stay trapped in the gums or jaw because there is no room left for them by the time they come through.
Q 02How many baby (primary) teeth does a child normally grow?
20
20 baby teeth include no premolars at all: the baby molars are the ones that fall out to make way for the adult premolars.
Q 03Which thin tooth coverings did a California dentist invent in 1928 to perfect film actors' smiles?
Veneers
Veneers began as film props: Charles Pincus's 1928 originals were stuck on only for the cameras, and it took acid-etched bonding decades later to make them a lasting fix.
Q 04What is the soft tissue in the center of a tooth, full of blood vessels and nerves, called?
Pulp
Pulp is what a root canal removes: the dentist cleans out the infected tissue and seals the space, so the tooth itself can stay in the jaw.
Q 05Which of the four tissues of a tooth sits between the outer enamel and the inner nerve chamber?
Dentin
Dentin is laced with microscopic tubes, so when its protective covering wears away, heat, cold and acidic foods reach the nerve inside: the cause of sensitive teeth.
Q 06Which type of tooth is designed mainly for tearing food?
Canines
Canines grip food so it can be torn apart, and in many mammals they double as weapons, which is why males often grow far larger ones than females.
Q 07Premolars are also known by what other name?
Bicuspids
Bicuspids, named for their two points, are the healthy teeth most often pulled to make room when crowded teeth are straightened.
Q 08Wisdom teeth are formally known as which teeth?
Third molars
Third molars got their nickname because they arrive so late, probably as a translation of the Latin dens sapientiae.
Q 09Which bacterium is most closely associated with tooth decay?
Streptococcus mutans
Streptococcus mutans feeds on sugar and excretes acid, and it is that acid, not the sugar itself, that eats into the surface of a tooth.
Q 10'Caries', the dentist's word for cavities, comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Decay
Decay is what the Latin caries meant, used of crumbling wood, walls and bones; the tooth kind is now the world's most common health condition, though it is largely preventable.
Q 11An ancient Mesopotamian tablet blamed cavities on what?
A tooth worm
A tooth worm, thought to eat teeth away from within, was still being blamed for toothache in the 18th century, when a dentist with a microscope reported finding none.
Q 12Which ancient law code ordered a man's teeth knocked out for knocking out the teeth of an equal?
The Code of Hammurabi
The Code of Hammurabi tied the penalty to rank: knock out the teeth of an equal and you lost your own, but a lower-ranked victim's teeth cost only a fine.
Q 13Hesy-Ra, an official of the pharaoh Djoser, is often credited with what dental distinction?
He is the earliest named dentist
Q 21How many natural teeth did George Washington have left on the day of his first inauguration in 1789?
One
One tooth, a premolar, was all he had left; when it too came out, Washington gave it to his dentist John Greenwood as a keepsake.
Q 22Which Revolutionary hero and part-time dentist identified a friend's body by a false tooth he had wired in?
Paul Revere
Paul Revere had wired the false tooth into Dr Joseph Warren's mouth himself; when Warren was dug from a shared grave months after Bunker Hill, his face was unrecognisable but the wire was not.
Q 23Which ancient people made partial dentures held with gold bands as early as the 7th century BC?
Etruscans
The Etruscans shaped replacements from human or animal teeth and fixed them in gold bands, a craft the Romans are thought to have borrowed from them.
He is the earliest named dentist on the strength of a single title, which Egyptologists read either as 'great one of the dentists' or as 'great one of the ivory cutters'.
Q 14Which Frenchman is credited as the 'father of modern dentistry' for his 1728 book The Surgeon Dentist?
Pierre Fauchard
Pierre Fauchard borrowed his tools from watchmakers, jewellers and barbers, and warned his patients that sugar was what rotted their teeth.
Q 15Before modern forceps, tooth-pullers worked with a clawed tool named after which bird?
Pelican
The dental pelican, named for a claw shaped like the bird's beak, pulled teeth for about four centuries; its successor, the dental key, was no kinder, often breaking the tooth or the jaw.
Q 16The world's first dental college opened in 1840 in which US city?
Baltimore
The Baltimore College of Dental Surgery opened in 1840; Cincinnati's Ohio College of Dental Surgery followed in 1845 and later graduated the first woman dentist.
Q 17Who was the first woman in the world to graduate from a dental college, in 1866?
Lucy Hobbs Taylor
Lucy Hobbs Taylor graduated from the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in 1866 after being refused for her sex; she had simply opened her own practice in 1861 instead.
Q 18Hartford dentist Horace Wells pioneered surgical anesthesia in 1844 using which gas?
Nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide never made Wells rich: he chose not to patent it, and two years later his former student William Morton won the fame by demonstrating ether instead.
Q 19How did Horace Wells first test his anesthetic gas on 11 December 1844?
On his own wisdom tooth
On his own wisdom tooth: the day after watching a volunteer at a gas show hurt his leg without noticing, Wells breathed the gas himself while his colleague John Riggs pulled the tooth.
Q 20Which material was actually in George Washington's dentures, which were never made of wood?
Hippopotamus ivory
Hippopotamus ivory, along with human and animal teeth and lead, made up his dentures; ivory stains quickly, which may be how the wooden-teeth myth started.
Q 24In which US city was water fluoridation first tested, starting on 25 January 1945?
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids, Michigan saw tooth decay among children born after the switch fall by more than 60 percent within 11 years, and fluoridation became national health policy.
Q 25Dentist Frederick McKay spent 30 years chasing the cause of which condition, later traced to fluoride in drinking water?
Colorado brown stain
Colorado brown stain looked alarming, but McKay found the mottled teeth were surprisingly resistant to decay, the clue that later led to fluoride being added to tap water.
Q 26Until 2015, US guidance recommended less fluoride in the drinking water of which communities?
Hotter towns
Hotter towns were told to add less because children there drank more water; the sliding scale was scrapped in 2015 after studies found that, in the age of air conditioning, they no longer did.
Q 27The first nylon-bristle toothbrush went on sale in 1938 thanks to which company's new fiber?
DuPont
DuPont's nylon made its commercial debut in a toothbrush, before nylon stockings reached the shops; it took over from the boar bristles that toothbrushes had used until then.
Q 28The Broxodent electric toothbrush was invented in 1954 by Dr Philippe-Guy Woog in which country?
Switzerland
Switzerland's Broxodent plugged straight into a wall socket and was first meant for people who struggled to brush by hand, such as patients with limited motor skills or braces.
Q 29What was the toothbrush's earliest known ancestor, used in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt some 5,000 years ago?
The chew stick
The chew stick was made by chewing one end of a twig until it frayed into a brush, while the other end served as a toothpick; the miswak twigs still used today are the same idea.
Q 30In the US, daily tooth brushing became a widespread habit only after which event?
World War II
World War II soldiers were ordered to brush every day and kept the habit when they came home; toothbrushes had been on sale in the US for decades, but daily brushing had never caught on.