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50 free Icebergs trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
An iceberg is simply a chunk of freshwater ice, at least 15 metres long, that has broken off a glacier or ice shelf and floated away, and yet icebergs have sunk the world's most famous ship, been mistaken for islands, been named after Belgium and Jamaica for size, and been eyed as a water supply for the desert. This quiz covers the physics (why only a tenth shows above the water, why old ice is blue, why melting bergs fizz), the geography (Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier, Antarctica's Ross and Larsen shelves, Newfoundland's Iceberg Alley) and the record holders from B-15 to A-68 and A23a. It also covers the human side: the Titanic and the International Ice Patrol founded because of it, radar and satellites, the naming system that gives every big Antarctic berg a letter and number, plans to tow icebergs to South Africa, iceberg beer, Project Habakkuk's ice aircraft carrier, Hemingway's iceberg theory and how iceberg lettuce got its name. Questions run from easy (what 'tip of the iceberg' means) to expert (the year the Ross Ice Shelf was discovered). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on icebergs, ice shelves, glaciers, individual bergs and the Ice Patrol, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Antarctica, Titanic and glaciers quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01An iceberg is a piece of what kind of ice, over 15 metres long, broken off a glacier or ice shelf?
Freshwater ice
Frozen seawater is sea ice, a different thing; icebergs are born on land.
Q 02Roughly what fraction of an iceberg's volume sits above the water?
About one tenth
Pure ice has a density of about 920 kg per cubic metre against seawater's 1,025, so Archimedes does the rest.
Q 03The word 'iceberg' is a partial loan translation from which language?
Dutch
Ijsberg literally means 'ice mountain', with cognates in Danish, German and Swedish.
Q 04Bergy bits are floating ice under 5 metres high. What are pieces under 1 metre called?
Growlers
Both are hard to spot on radar and dangerous to small boats.
Q 05What is the technical term for a mass of ice breaking away from a glacier or ice shelf?
Calving
It is often preceded by a loud crack or boom, and blocks up to 60 metres high can crash into the water.
Q 06Large flat-topped icebergs with steep sides and a length-to-height ratio over 5:1 are called what?
Tabular
They typically break off Antarctic ice shelves such as the Ross and Filchner-Ronne; Greenland's bergs are usually irregular.
Q 07Which Antarctic ice shelf has calved the largest icebergs on record?
Ross
It is about the size of France and was discovered by James Clark Ross in 1841.
Q 08Iceberg B-15, the largest on record, calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in 2000. It was about the size of which island?
Jamaica
It measured roughly 295 by 37 km, about 11,000 square kilometres, and its fragments were still being tracked in 2018.
Q 09A flat-topped iceberg seen by the USS Glacier in 1956, 335 by 97 km, was larger than which country?
Belgium
It was seen 240 km west of Scott Island in the South Pacific and remains the largest ever recorded.
Q 10Iceberg A-68, which broke away in July 2017, came from which ice shelf?
Larsen C
At 5,800 square kilometres it was twice the size of Luxembourg; no significant fragments remained by April 2021.
Q 11Iceberg A23a calved in 1986 but did not begin moving until 2020. Why?
It was stuck on the sea bed
By early 2025 it was the world's largest iceberg and had run aground off South Georgia.
Q 12Which organisation is the only one that names and tracks all Antarctic icebergs?
The US National Ice Center
Every berg over 10 nautical miles along one axis gets a letter for its quadrant of origin plus a running number.
Q 13In Antarctic iceberg names such as A-68 or B-15, what does the letter stand for?
The quadrant where it originated
Q 21How high above the sea was the tallest North Atlantic iceberg on record, seen by the Eastwind in 1958?
168 m, a 55-storey building
That is the height of a 55-storey building; such bergs come from western Greenland's glaciers.
Q 22Which fast-moving Greenland glacier, whose fjord is a UNESCO site, is a prolific iceberg producer?
Jakobshavn
Its bergs can be a kilometre tall and get stuck on the fjord floor for years; it flows more than 45 metres a day.
Q 23Icebergs from Greenland's fastest-declining glacier caused what share of 20th-century sea-level rise?
4 percent
The number is simply a running count within that quadrant.
Q 14Titanic's collision with an iceberg in April 1912 killed roughly how many people?
About 1,500
The German liner Kronprinz Wilhelm had rammed a berg in 1907, crushed her bow, and still finished her voyage.
Q 15How fast was Titanic travelling when her lookouts sighted the iceberg?
About 22 knots
Her wireless operators had received seven ice warnings, and the North Atlantic ice that April was the worst in 50 years.
Q 16Titanic's lookouts Fleet and Lee had no binoculars that night. Why?
A mix-up at Southampton
Reportedly they would have made little difference in the starlit dark, and the calm sea meant no waves broke against the ice.
Q 17The International Ice Patrol, formed in 1914, is operated by which body?
The United States Coast Guard
It is funded by 13 nations with an interest in trans-Atlantic shipping and watches the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
Q 18What does the Ice Patrol do every 15 April at the site of the Titanic disaster?
Lays a wreath from a ship or aircraft
A dedication statement to the ship and her dead is read by the crew.
Q 19The 1913 conference in London that led to the Ice Patrol also produced which international treaty?
SOLAS, the Safety of Life at Sea convention
Wireless rules were also harmonised so that rival radio companies had to handle each other's calls.
Q 20Canada's RADARSAT-1, launched in 1995, was the first satellite to track icebergs using what?
Synthetic aperture radar
It sends microwaves to the sea surface and records the reflections, working through cloud and darkness.
It is one of the fastest-declining glaciers on Earth.
Q 24Ilulissat Icefjord in Greenland was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which year?
2004
The listing cited its beauty and the glacier's role in understanding climate change.
Q 25What is the fizzing sound made by a melting iceberg popularly called?
Bergie Seltzer
Icebergs can be up to 10 percent air by volume; the noise comes from compressed bubbles bursting as the ice melts.
Q 26Why do some old icebergs appear blue?
Compressed, bubble-free ice absorbs red light
Centuries of pressure squeeze out the air, so the light that comes back through the ice is blue or blue-green.
Q 27What gives some icebergs a dirty black colour?
Sediment
Others are green, yellow, striped or even rainbow-coloured thanks to seawater, algae or a lack of air bubbles.
Q 28When a huge iceberg calves and flips against a glacier front it can produce what?
A 'glacial earthquake'
These events can release as much energy as an atomic bomb and momentarily shove the whole glacier backwards.
Q 29Which Canadian province taxed iceberg harvesting in 2016 and capped berg water exports?
Newfoundland and Labrador
Its annual iceberg supply exceeds the entire freshwater consumption of the United States; the water goes into bottled water, ice cubes and beer.
Q 30In 2019 Nick Sloane proposed towing an Antarctic iceberg to which country for about $200 million?
South Africa
A UAE company had announced a similar Middle East plan in 2017.