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50 free Helium trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This helium trivia quiz covers the second-lightest element and the only one first spotted on the Sun before anyone found it on Earth. The easy questions handle the basics: its symbol and atomic number, the family of gases it belongs to, why it lifts balloons, why it makes voices squeaky and why party balloons are actually a small part of its use. The harder end gets into the strange physics and history: the 1868 eclipse observation and Lockyer's naming, Ramsay isolating it from uranium ore in 1895, the Kansas gas well that would not burn, Kamerlingh Onnes liquefying it in 1908, why it never freezes at atmospheric pressure, superfluid helium II and its creeping film, the US National Helium Reserve, why the Hindenburg used hydrogen instead, helium-3 on the Moon and the Large Hadron Collider's 96 tonnes of coolant. Every answer was checked against the element's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our hydrogen, periodic table and chemistry quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is helium's atomic number?
2
Its symbol is He, and it heads the noble gas column of the periodic table.
Q 02Helium takes its name from the Greek word for what?
The Sun
It was named after an unknown yellow line spotted in the solar spectrum in 1868, decades before anyone found it on Earth.
Q 03To which group of the periodic table does helium belong?
The noble gases
It is the first member of the group and, after neon, the second least reactive element of all.
Q 04Roughly what share of the ordinary matter in the universe is helium, by mass?
About 24%
Only hydrogen is more abundant; helium outweighs all the heavier elements put together more than 12 times over.
Q 05During what event was helium first detected in sunlight, in 1868?
A total solar eclipse
Jules Janssen recorded the bright yellow line at Guntur, India, and it was at first assumed to be sodium.
Q 06Which English astronomer proposed the yellow D3 line was a new element and named it?
Norman Lockyer
The '-ium' ending is odd because it is normally reserved for metals; the astronomer probably did not know the chemists' convention.
Q 07Who first detected helium on Earth, in 1881, in material from an eruption of Mount Vesuvius?
Luigi Palmieri
He recognised the D3 spectral line in the sublimated volcanic material.
Q 08Which Scottish chemist isolated helium on Earth in 1895 by treating the mineral cleveite with acids?
William Ramsay
He had been looking for argon, and had planned to call the new gas krypton, a name he later reused for another noble gas.
Q 09Cleveite, the ore from which helium was first isolated, is a variety of which uranium mineral?
Uraninite
Uranium and thorium minerals hold helium because their alpha particles are helium nuclei that grab electrons once they stop in the rock.
Q 10Which pair showed in 1907 that alpha particles are helium nuclei using thin glass and an evacuated tube?
Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds
A discharge in the tube revealed the tell-tale spectrum of the gas that had built up inside.
Q 11Who first liquefied helium, in 1908?
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
He got it below 5 K but could not freeze it; his student Willem Keesom finally solidified a cubic centimetre in 1926 using extra pressure.
Q 12What is unique about helium at atmospheric pressure as it approaches absolute zero?
It stays liquid and never freezes
Its zero-point energy is too high to allow a solid; you need about 25 atmospheres of pressure to freeze it.
Q 13Below roughly what temperature does helium liquefy at atmospheric pressure?
4.2 K
That is the lowest boiling point of any element; nitrogen, by comparison, boils at 77 K.
Q 21What is the largest single use of helium?
Cryogenics, mainly cooling MRI magnets
Balloons are the best-known use but a minor one; cryogenic cooling of superconducting magnets took about a third of world supply in 2014.
Q 22How much liquid helium does the Large Hadron Collider use to keep its magnets at 1.9 K?
96 metric tons
That is colder than deep space, which sits at about 2.7 K.
Q 23What is helium's concentration in Earth's atmosphere?
About 5.2 parts per million
Q 14Who discovered in 1938 that helium-4 loses almost all viscosity near absolute zero, now called superfluidity?
Pyotr Kapitsa
The same effect was seen in helium-3 in 1972 at far lower temperatures, work that earned a 1996 Nobel Prize.
Q 15What is the superfluid phase of liquid He-4 below the lambda point called?
Helium II
Its thermal conductivity is a million times that of ordinary liquid helium and several hundred times that of copper.
Q 16What is the thin layer of superfluid helium that creeps up and over the walls of its container called?
A Rollin film
It is about 30 nanometres thick regardless of the surface, and lets helium II escape any unsealed vessel to somewhere warmer.
Q 17Heat travelling through helium II as a wave at about 20 m/s is known as what?
Second sound
Waves on the creeping surface film, restored by van der Waals force rather than gravity, are called third sound.
Q 18Why does inhaling helium make a voice go squeaky?
Sound travels almost three times faster in it than in air
The vocal folds vibrate at the same pitch; it is the resonances of the vocal tract that shift upward, changing the timbre.
Q 19Inhaling which dense gas produces the opposite effect to helium, deepening the voice?
Sulfur hexafluoride
Xenon works too; both slow the speed of sound and lower the vocal tract's resonant frequencies.
Q 20What is the main danger of inhaling too much helium?
Asphyxiation, since it displaces oxygen
Breathing straight from a pressurised cylinder is worse still, as the pressure can rupture lung tissue.
It stays low despite constant production underground because it escapes into space, making it a non-renewable resource.
Q 24Most of the helium on Earth is created by what process?
Radioactive decay of uranium and thorium
Around 3,000 tonnes a year form this way in the lithosphere, and much of it gets trapped underground.
Q 25From what source is commercial helium extracted?
Natural gas
Some gas fields hold more than 7% helium; extracting it from air, where it is 5 ppm, is not economical.
Q 26A 1903 gas geyser that would not burn revealed helium in a drilling well. Where was it?
Dexter, Kansas
Kansas geologist Erasmus Haworth found the gas was 72% nitrogen and 15% methane; further analysis showed 1.84% helium.
Q 27Where did the US government set up the National Helium Reserve in 1925?
Amarillo, Texas
The Cliffside gas field nearby stored a helium-nitrogen mix piped 425 miles from Bushton, Kansas.
Q 28Why did German Zeppelins such as the Hindenburg use hydrogen instead of helium?
A 1925 US law banned its export
America held a production monopoly at the time, and the gas was prohibitively expensive anyway.
Q 29What was the world's first helium-filled airship?
The US Navy blimp C-7
It flew from Hampton Roads, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., on 1 December 1921, nearly two years before the rigid USS Shenandoah.
Q 30Which country overtook Qatar in 2024 to become the world's largest helium producer?
The USA
The US extracted 68 million standard cubic metres that year against Qatar's 64 million.