Ethanol
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40 free Ethanol trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ethanol is the one alcohol people drink, but that is only part of its story. The same small molecule powers race cars, preserves medicines, cleans hands and once sent rockets toward space. It turns up in ripe fruit, on the breath of a driver at a roadside stop and in clouds of gas far beyond the solar system. This quiz collects the best fun facts about ethanol and turns them into questions. It covers the chemistry that makes the liquid behave as it does, the fermentation that produces it, the long history of testing and taxing it, its role as a motor fuel, and what happens inside the body after a drink. It is written for curious readers, chemistry students, teachers looking for a lively lesson starter, and anyone who has wondered what is actually in the glass. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few facts worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Tests of which famous rocket were hampered by technicians stealing and drinking its ethanol fuel?
V-2
V-2 fuel was a drinkable mix of ethanol and water. A pink dye added to deter thieves failed once crews learned to filter it out with potatoes.
Q 02Sagittarius B2, a giant gas cloud containing ethanol, lies near the center of which galaxy?
Milky Way
The Milky Way keeps this cloud about 390 light-years from its center. Sagittarius B2 also holds the compound that flavors raspberries, so some writers imagine it smelling of raspberry rum.
Q 03Which Ford car, launched in 1908, had an engine that could also run on ethanol or kerosene?
Model T
The Model T could switch fuels, but cheaper fossil fuel and then Prohibition made ethanol impractical for most drivers.
Q 04In England's old 'proof' test for ethanol content, which substance was soaked in spirits and then set alight?
Gunpowder
Gunpowder that still burned after soaking put a spirit 'above proof', which mattered because spirits were taxed by strength. Proof was later fixed at about 57% alcohol.
Q 05Alcohol, the everyday name for ethanol, comes from the Arabic al-kuhl, a powder originally used as what?
Eye makeup
Eye makeup is the root: kuhl was the dark powder, usually antimony, that still gives us the word kohl. Alchemists later used alcohol for any refined essence, then for the intoxicating part of wine.
Q 06Under US food rules, which baking flavoring must contain at least 35% ethanol to be labeled pure?
Vanilla extract
Vanilla extract is made by steeping the pods in ethanol and water. The FDA standard also sets a minimum weight of vanilla beans per liter.
Q 07Which builder's tool is named after the ethanol traditionally sealed with a bubble inside its glass vial?
Spirit level
A spirit level uses alcohol rather than water because it will not freeze and lets the bubble move quickly and settle accurately.
Q 08Which country launched the Pró-Álcool program in 1975 to run its cars on ethanol made from sugarcane?
Brazil
Brazil now blends ethanol into all of its motor fuel, so the unblended kind is no longer sold anywhere in the country.
Q 09Which astronaut made the first American spaceflight in 1961 atop a Redstone rocket fueled by ethanol?
Alan Shepard
Alan Shepard flew for just 15 minutes in Freedom 7. The Redstone under him burned three parts ethyl alcohol to one part water.
Q 10Ethanol ranks as the world's second most consumed psychoactive drug, behind which other substance?
Caffeine
Caffeine alone outranks it. Ethanol takes second place as the active ingredient in every alcoholic drink.
Q 11Pure ethanol burns with a smokeless flame of which color, often too faint to see in daylight?
Blue
Blue and smokeless, the flame makes ethanol a handy fuel for lamps, cooking stoves and decorative fireplaces.
Q 12Ethanol stays liquid down to −114 °C, so it replaces mercury in which instrument used in extreme cold?
Thermometer
A thermometer filled with ethanol works down to about −70 °C, but tops out near 78 °C, where the liquid boils.
Q 13Fermenting sugar into ethanol also releases which gas, the one that makes bread dough rise?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide and ethanol come off in equal numbers: every molecule of glucose yields two of each.
Q 21The 'tears' that creep down the inside of a wine glass form because ethanol does what faster than water?
Evaporates
Ethanol evaporates faster from the thin film climbing the glass, and the shift in surface tension drags more wine upward until it falls back as drops.
Q 22Ethanol is known as grain alcohol; which poisonous relative is called wood alcohol after the way it was once made?
Methanol
Methanol was once made by the destructive distillation of wood. Swallowing just a few grams can permanently damage the optic nerve.
Q 23Hospitals can give ethanol as an antidote to someone who has swallowed which sweet-tasting car fluid?
Antifreeze
Antifreeze contains a glycol that the body converts into poisons. Ethanol competes for the same enzyme, so the glycol is not broken down.
Q 14Which single-celled fungus turns the sugars in grape juice and grain mash into ethanol?
Yeast
Yeast has done the job since ancient times, and one species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, makes wine, beer and bread alike.
Q 15Which French chemist showed in the 1850s that fermentation into ethanol is caused by living microbes, not decay?
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur took up the question at Lille after a local distiller asked why his beet alcohol kept souring, and overturned the view that fermentation was mere chemical decomposition.
Q 16Bacteria that turn the ethanol in wine or cider into acetic acid produce which kitchen staple?
Vinegar
Vinegar comes from this second fermentation, and the slimy film of bacteria that builds up in a slow batch is known as the mother.
Q 17Which organ breaks down most of the ethanol a person drinks, using the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase?
Liver
The liver handles about 90% of it, and long-term heavy drinking can leave the organ seriously damaged.
Q 18Gram for gram, ethanol's 7 calories rank second only to which nutrient for food energy?
Fat
Fat leads with 9 calories per gram, while protein and most carbohydrates supply about 4.
Q 19Almost all the fuel ethanol produced in the United States is made by fermenting which crop?
Corn
Corn supplies about 94% of American ethanol; enzymes added to the mash first break its starch down into simple sugars.
Q 20In fuel names such as E10 and E85, the number gives the percentage of ethanol; what is the rest?
Gasoline
Gasoline makes up the rest, so E10 is 90% ordinary fuel and runs in most modern cars with no changes to the engine.
Q 24Boiling a mix of ethanol and water cannot purify it beyond about 96%, because the two form which kind of mixture?
Azeotrope
This azeotrope boils just below pure ethanol and well below water, giving off vapor with the same makeup as the liquid, so distilling it again changes nothing.
Q 25The human body first converts ethanol into which toxic compound, a contributing cause of hangovers?
Acetaldehyde
Acetaldehyde is normally cleared by a second enzyme. Many East Asians carry a weaker version of it, so the compound builds up and their faces flush red.
Q 26Which rare condition makes gut microbes ferment food into ethanol, intoxicating someone who has had no alcohol?
Auto-brewery syndrome
Auto-brewery syndrome is so rare that it has been raised, sometimes successfully, as a defense in impaired-driving cases.
Q 27Which device did Indiana State Police captain Robert Borkenstein invent in the 1950s?
Breathalyzer
The Breathalyzer measures the ethanol in a driver's exhaled breath. It followed a 1930s machine that caught the breath in a balloon, and its brand name became the generic word.
Q 28In many countries, denatured alcohol, ethanol made unfit to drink, is traditionally dyed which color as a warning?
Violet
Violet dye marks it at a glance. Because it escapes the heavy taxes on drinks, additives make it bitter or poisonous so that nobody is tempted.
Q 29Residue on 9,000-year-old pottery shows Neolithic villagers were already drinking fermented alcohol in which country?
China
In China, jars from the village of Jiahu held traces of a drink fermented from rice, honey and fruit.
Q 30Ethanol lit lamps across the United States from about 1840 until a tax imposed during which war made it uneconomical?
American Civil War
The American Civil War tax fell on all industrial alcohol, and it was decades before ethanol returned as a fuel, this time for cars.