Formaldehyde
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40 free Formaldehyde trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Formaldehyde is one of those chemicals almost everyone has heard of and almost no one can describe. Most people meet it as the sharp smell of a school biology lab, yet it is also one of the busiest building blocks in industry, turning up in furniture, flooring, clothing and cosmetics. This quiz covers the whole story: the basic chemistry and the people who first made the compound, how it preserves tissue and why undertakers and museums rely on it, the plastics and glues built from it, and the health scares and regulations that followed. Along the way it visits a notorious artwork, a monster movie, a quarantined island and some alarming chapters in the history of food safety. It suits chemistry students revising aldehydes, quiz hosts after a science round with some surprises, and anyone curious about what is really in the air of a new home. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Formaldehyde is sold dissolved in water, but what is the pure compound at room temperature?
A colorless gas
A colorless gas with a sharp smell is the pure form, which is why it is handled in water: condensed to a liquid, it quickly links itself into a solid.
Q 02Which British artist suspended a tiger shark in a tank of formaldehyde for a 1991 artwork?
Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst paid £6,000 for the shark, and the original decayed so badly that a new specimen replaced it in 2006.
Q 03In the early 1900s, US bottling plants added formaldehyde to which drink to stop it spoiling?
Milk
Milk was dosed with formaldehyde as a cheap stand-in for pasteurization, at a time when few people understood how toxic the chemical was.
Q 04Which paralyzing disease was targeted by a 1955 vaccine made from virus killed with formaldehyde?
Polio
Polio was the target of Jonas Salk's shot, which grew three strains of the virus in monkey kidney cells and then inactivated them with a formaldehyde solution.
Q 05Which hurricane's survivors were housed in FEMA trailers that gave off toxic levels of formaldehyde?
Katrina
Katrina survivors in the trailers reported breathing trouble, eye irritation and nosebleeds, and tests traced the cause to formaldehyde given off by the glues and pressed wood inside.
Q 06Formaldehyde, toluene and dibutyl phthalate make up the so-called toxic trio of which cosmetic?
Nail polish
Nail polish drew enough concern that San Francisco passed an ordinance publicly identifying salons whose polishes are free of all three chemicals.
Q 07Which space agency tested in 1989 whether houseplants could remove formaldehyde from indoor air?
NASA
NASA ran the tests with a landscaping trade group, hoping plants could clean the air inside sealed space stations; benzene and trichloroethylene were tested too.
Q 08Formaldehyde takes the first half of its name from the Latin word for which insect?
Ant
Ant is formica in Latin: chemists named formic acid after the insects that make it, then reused the root for the acid's one-carbon relatives.
Q 09Which early plastic, used for old telephones and radios, is made by reacting formaldehyde with phenol?
Bakelite
Bakelite, patented by Leo Baekeland in 1909, was the first plastic made from synthetic components, and it withstands heat and does not conduct electricity, which suited it to casings.
Q 10Which toxic alcohol, found in windshield washer fluid, does the human liver convert into formaldehyde?
Methanol
Methanol does its damage after liver enzymes turn it into formaldehyde and then formic acid, which can leave a drinker blind.
Q 11What name is given to the roughly 37% solution of formaldehyde in water used to preserve specimens?
Formalin
Formalin began as a trade name, and makers add a little alcohol as a stabilizer so the solution does not cloud into solid polymer.
Q 12Which salon hair-smoothing treatment drew an OSHA hazard alert for releasing formaldehyde?
Brazilian blowout
Brazilian blowout solution labeled formaldehyde-free still pushed air readings past federal limits when OSHA tested salons that were using it.
Q 13Which preservation method behind the Body Worlds exhibitions begins by fixing a corpse in formaldehyde?
Plastination
Plastination, developed by Gunther von Hagens in 1977, goes on to replace the body's water and fat with plastics such as silicone, leaving specimens that can be touched and do not decay.
Q 21Formaldehyde is reacted with which common fertilizer compound to make the main glue in particleboard?
Urea
Urea resins are the biggest single use of formaldehyde, and over 70% of them go to the wood-products industry to bond particleboard, MDF and plywood.
Q 22Formaldehyde reacts with which compound to make the hard resin of Formica laminate and picnic plates?
Melamine
Melamine tableware was fashionable in the late 1950s and 1960s, then sales fell away once owners found that the cups and plates stained and scratched.
Q 23What is the systematic name for formaldehyde under the IUPAC rules taught in chemistry classes?
Methanal
Methanal joins meth-, the prefix for a single carbon atom, to the -al ending that marks an aldehyde.
Q 14Which South Korean monster film opens with formaldehyde being poured down a drain into the Han River?
The Host
The Host drew on a real case from 2000, when a civilian at a US military mortuary in South Korea had staff tip about 470 bottles of the chemical down the drain.
Q 15In chamber studies, which part of the body proves most sensitive to formaldehyde in the air?
The eyes
The eyes react first, with volunteers reporting irritation at about half a part per million, though many people can smell the chemical at lower levels still.
Q 16Gruinard Island in Scotland was sprayed with formaldehyde in 1986 to kill spores of which disease?
Anthrax
Anthrax bombs tested on sheep there in 1942 left the island quarantined for 48 years, and it took 280 tonnes of formaldehyde solution in seawater to make it safe.
Q 17Which toxic element was common in embalming fluid until the early 1900s, when formaldehyde took over?
Arsenic
Arsenic fell out of favor partly because murder suspects could claim that the traces found in a body came from the undertaker's fluid, not from them.
Q 18Clothing makers add formaldehyde-based resins to cotton fabric to give it which property?
Wrinkle resistance
Wrinkle resistance has been sold this way since 1929: the resin cross-links cotton's fibers so a shirt needs no ironing, though the finish can release traces of the chemical.
Q 19What is the chemical formula of formaldehyde, the simplest of all the aldehydes?
CH2O
CH2O is just one carbon double-bonded to an oxygen and carrying two hydrogens, which makes it the smallest molecule in its family.
Q 20In 1969 formaldehyde became the first organic molecule of more than two atoms to be detected where?
The interstellar medium
The interstellar medium turned out to hold plenty of it: astronomers have since found formaldehyde in many regions of the galaxy and in the comas of comets.
Q 24Formaldehyde preserves tissue by forming chemical cross-links between which large biological molecules?
Proteins
Proteins are locked together through their amino groups, which hardens the tissue and halts decay; a weak solution works inward at about a millimeter an hour.
Q 25Which consumer-goods giant pledged to phase out a formaldehyde-releasing preservative from its cosmetics by 2015?
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson bowed to consumer pressure over quaternium-15, an ingredient that kills microbes by slowly giving off small amounts of formaldehyde.
Q 26What did newspapers nickname Harvey Wiley's volunteers, who ate meals dosed with formaldehyde and borax?
The Poison Squad
The Poison Squad ate every meal at a common table from 1902 while the doses rose, and the publicity built pressure for a federal food and drug law.
Q 27Formaldehyde reacting in sunlight with nitrogen oxides helps form which gas, a key ingredient of smog?
Ozone
Ozone near the ground is a pollutant, and formaldehyde also supplies the reactive radicals that keep the lower atmosphere able to break down other pollutants.
Q 28Most formaldehyde over remote oceans forms when sunlight-driven reactions oxidize which greenhouse gas?
Methane
Methane oxidation dominates far from land, while over the continents the main source is isoprene and other vapors given off by vegetation.
Q 29Which shape does the formaldehyde molecule have, with its bond angles close to 120 degrees?
Trigonal planar
Trigonal planar is the shape, flat like boron trifluoride, and the measured angle between formaldehyde's two hydrogens is 117 degrees.
Q 30Which US flooring chain did 60 Minutes accuse in 2015 of selling laminate with excess formaldehyde?
Lumber Liquidators
Lumber Liquidators was also in the sights of a hedge fund manager who had shorted its stock and paid $5,000 to have three pieces of its wood tested.