Histology
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50 free Histology trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Histology is anatomy at the scale of the microscope: the study of how cells are arranged into tissues, and how tissues build organs. It is also the everyday language of the pathology lab, where a stained slice of a biopsy can settle a diagnosis. This quiz moves through the slides a histology course covers: the units and cells of bone, the types of epithelium and connective tissue, the layers and sensors of the skin, the lining of the airways and the stomach, and the features pathologists look for in tumours. A few questions cover the stains, instruments and scientists that built the field. It suits anatomy and physiology students, nursing and medical students revising for a practical, and anyone curious about what the body looks like up close. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which French anatomist, called the father of histology, identified 21 tissue types without a microscope?
Xavier Bichat
Xavier Bichat thought the microscopes of his day too crude for medicine. He died at 30, probably of typhoid caught while examining decaying skin.
Q 02Hematoxylin, the nuclear dye in the standard H&E tissue stain, is extracted from the wood of which tree?
Logwood
Logwood heartwood yields the dye, but it stains nothing until it has been oxidised and paired with a metal salt, most often aluminium.
Q 03Which large bone cell, usually holding several nuclei, dissolves old bone by secreting acid?
Osteoclast
Osteoclast comes from Greek words for 'bone' and 'broken'. The cell pumps hydrogen ions into the space beneath it and leaves a shallow pit behind.
Q 04Which cells in the stomach's gastric glands secrete both hydrochloric acid and intrinsic factor?
Parietal
Parietal cells pump acid against a gradient of three to four million to one, among the steepest ion gradients in any mammalian tissue.
Q 05Which tiny smooth muscles attached to hair follicles contract in the cold to raise goose bumps?
Arrector pili
Arrector pili muscles contract without any conscious control. In furry mammals the raised hairs trap a layer of air that helps the animal hold on to heat.
Q 06Which cell type makes up about 90 percent of the cells in the human epidermis?
Keratinocyte
Keratinocyte life is a one-way trip: born in the deepest layer of the epidermis, each cell migrates to the surface and is shed some 40 to 56 days later.
Q 07Which instrument slices wax-embedded tissue into sections thin enough for light to pass through?
Microtome
Microtome comes from Greek words for 'small' and 'to cut', and the finest models can shave a section just 50 nanometres thick.
Q 08In the H&E stain used on most biopsy slides, eosin colours the cytoplasm of cells which shade?
Pink
Pink is the mark of eosin, which clings to the proteins in cytoplasm and in the material between cells, while hematoxylin turns the nuclei blue-purple.
Q 09Light and dark human skin contain similar numbers of which pigment-producing cells in the epidermis?
Melanocytes
Melanocytes are about equally common in every skin tone. The difference lies in how the pigment is packaged once it is handed to neighbouring skin cells.
Q 10Which cell in human blood ejects its nucleus as it matures, leaving more room for hemoglobin?
Erythrocyte
Erythrocyte is the formal name for a red blood cell, which circulates for about 100 to 120 days as little more than a flexible sack of hemoglobin.
Q 11Robert Hooke coined the biological term 'cell' in 1665 after examining a thin slice of which material?
Cork
Cork showed Hooke a structure of small walled enclosures under his microscope, and his book Micrographia handed biology the word.
Q 12Compact bone is built from cylinders of concentric lamellae around a central canal, each called what?
Osteon
Osteon is the modern name for the Haversian system, after Clopton Havers, the 17th-century English physician who described the canals running through bone.
Q 13Which mature bone cell sits sealed inside a cavity called a lacuna, with a half-life of about 25 years?
Osteocyte
An osteocyte is simply a bone-building cell that became trapped in the matrix it secreted. It never divides, but long branching arms keep it in touch with its neighbours.
Q 21Which thin sheet of extracellular matrix anchors every epithelium to the connective tissue beneath it?
Basement membrane
Basement membrane doubles as a supply route, since epithelium has no blood supply of its own and nutrients must diffuse across from the tissue below.
Q 22Which epithelium, also called urothelium, changes shape as the urinary bladder fills and empties?
Transitional
Transitional epithelium looks cuboidal when relaxed and flattened when stretched, and it seals urine in so that wastes cannot seep back into the bloodstream.
Q 23Which hair-like projections on airway cells beat 10 to 20 times a second to sweep mucus toward the throat?
Cilia
Q 14Which tiny channels radiate between the lacunae of bone, linking the cells trapped in the hard matrix?
Canaliculi
Canaliculi pass on materials picked up near blood vessels, spreading them through the bone matrix to cells that can never move to feed themselves.
Q 15Which mineral, also the main ingredient of tooth enamel, makes up about 70 percent of human bone by weight?
Hydroxyapatite
Hydroxyapatite crystals in bone are interspersed in a matrix of collagen, while in enamel the supporting proteins are amelogenins and enamelins instead.
Q 16Which membrane covers the outer surface of bones and, unlike bone tissue, contains pain-sensing nerves?
Periosteum
Periosteum also holds a reserve of progenitor cells that turn into bone- and cartilage-forming cells after a fracture, which makes it essential to healing.
Q 17Spongy bone gets its porous look from a network of thin bony struts known by which name?
Trabeculae
Trabeculae line up along the loads a bone has to carry, so the lattice inside a femur is strongest in exactly the directions the stress runs.
Q 18Which cell stores one large lipid droplet that squashes its nucleus flat against the edge of the cell?
Adipocyte
Adipocyte is the formal name for a fat cell, and the white kind is almost all droplet, with its cytoplasm reduced to a thin surrounding layer.
Q 19Which heat-producing tissue, abundant in newborns and hibernating mammals, is coloured by its mitochondria?
Brown fat
Brown fat makes heat without any shivering, and each of its cells holds numerous small lipid droplets packed among the mitochondria.
Q 20Heart muscle cells are joined end to end by which junctions, a microscopic hallmark of cardiac tissue?
Intercalated discs
Intercalated discs combine anchoring junctions with gap junctions, which lets the separate cells of the heart work as a single functional unit.
Cilia number around 200 on each airway cell, and their coordinated beat is nicknamed the mucociliary escalator because it carries mucus up to be swallowed or coughed out.
Q 24Which spindle-shaped cell, the most common in connective tissue, makes collagen and helps wounds to heal?
Fibroblast
Fibroblast cells build the structural framework of animal tissues, laying down both the fibres and the surrounding matrix that everything else sits in.
Q 25Which granule-packed cells, named by the German scientist Paul Ehrlich, store the histamine released in allergies?
Mast cell
Mast cell is a misnomer: Ehrlich wrongly believed the granules fed the surrounding tissue, so he named them Mastzellen, German for well-fed cells.
Q 26Which cartilage, the most common type in the body, forms the C-shaped rings of the trachea?
Hyaline
Hyaline cartilage also coats the ends of bones at joints, and it has no nerves or blood supply, so nutrients can reach its cells only by diffusion.
Q 27Which spot-like junctions bind cells together in tissues under heavy mechanical stress?
Desmosomes
Desmosomes, whose name means 'binding body', are the target of the antibodies that cause the blistering skin disease pemphigus.
Q 28Which tissue-dwelling white blood cell engulfs and digests microbes, dead cells and other debris?
Macrophage
Macrophage cells were named by Élie Metchnikoff, who found such 'eating cells' by pushing thorns into starfish larvae and watching cells surround them.
Q 29Which single layer of flat cells lines the inside of every blood and lymphatic vessel in the body?
Endothelium
Endothelium cells are classed by what they touch: vascular where they meet blood, lymphatic where they meet lymph.
Q 30Which finger-like projections form the absorbing 'brush border' of the small intestine's lining cells?
Microvilli
Microvilli stand in their thousands on a single cell and are not the same as intestinal villi, which are far larger structures made of many cells.