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60 free Iron trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This iron trivia quiz covers the metal that built the modern world and the element that makes your blood red. The easy questions are the ones anyone can attempt: the chemical symbol, what rust is, why iron sticks to magnets, and the age of history named after it. From there the set moves through the science: atomic number 26, the four stable isotopes, the Curie point where iron loses its magnetism, why Earth's core is mostly iron, the supernovae that forged it, and the four grams inside every adult human body. The harder end is for chemists, historians and metallurgists: the meteoritic beads of Gerzeh and Tutankhamun's dagger, the Hittites who first smelted ore, the difference between wrought iron, cast iron and steel, Abraham Darby's coke furnace and Henry Bessemer's converter, the first iron bridge, the phosphorus-rich pillar in Delhi that has resisted rust for 1,600 years, the Hoba meteorite, banded iron formations, hemochromatosis, the mussels that reinforce their threads with iron, and the countries that dominate the ore trade. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for iron, its ores, alloys, biology and history before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Periodic Table, Chemistry and Steel quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the chemical symbol for iron?
Fe
It comes from the Latin word ferrum.
Q 02What is the atomic number of iron?
26
It sits in group 8 of the periodic table, in the first transition series.
Q 03By mass, iron is the most common element where?
On Earth as a whole
Most of it lies in the planet's inner and outer core.
Q 04Iron ranks where among elements in the Earth's crust by abundance?
Fourth
Only oxygen, silicon and aluminium are more abundant in the crust.
Q 05What is the common name for the hydrated iron oxides formed when iron meets oxygen and water?
Rust
Unlike protective oxides on some metals, rust flakes off and exposes fresh metal to further corrosion.
Q 06Why does rusting keep eating into iron instead of stopping at the surface?
Rust takes up more volume and flakes off
Some other metals form thin passivating oxide layers that seal the surface instead.
Q 07Below what temperature, its Curie point, does iron become ferromagnetic?
770 °C
Above that temperature the atomic spins no longer align and iron is only paramagnetic.
Q 08At what temperature does iron melt?
1,538 °C
On cooling it first crystallises as the body-centred cubic delta allotrope.
Q 09Which naturally magnetised iron mineral provided the earliest compasses?
Lodestone (magnetite)
Magnetite particles later coated magnetic tapes and floppy disks.
Q 10How many stable isotopes does iron have?
Four
Iron-56 makes up nearly 92 percent of natural iron.
Q 11Iron's abundance on rocky planets is due to its production during which cosmic events?
Type Ia supernovae
Runaway fusion in these explosions scatters iron into space.
Q 12What is believed to generate Earth's magnetic field?
Electric currents in the liquid iron outer core
The inner and outer core together make up about 35 percent of Earth's mass.
Q 13Roughly how much iron does an adult human body contain?
4 grams
About three quarters of it is in hemoglobin.
Q 21Sea mussels use iron-based bonds in their cuticles to do what?
Grip rocks in the ocean
Synthetic replicas showed iron raised the material's toughness 92 times.
Q 22The 7.5% nickel in the Gerzeh iron beads (Egypt, 3500 BC or earlier) is the signature of what?
Meteoritic origin
Crustal iron generally has only minuscule nickel impurities.
Q 23A dagger forged from a fallen meteorite was found in whose tomb?
Tutankhamun
Its iron, cobalt and nickel matched a meteorite found in the area.
Q 14Which iron-containing protein carries oxygen in red blood cells and gives them their colour?
Hemoglobin
Each molecule can carry up to four oxygen molecules.
Q 15Which protein carries absorbed iron through the blood to cells?
Transferrin
At the bone marrow the iron is stored as ferritin before going into hemoglobin.
Q 16Why is carbon monoxide poisonous?
It binds to hemoglobin far more strongly than oxygen
The resulting compound is called carboxyhemoglobin.
Q 17Which nutrient's deficiency is the most common in the world?
Iron
Left untreated it leads to anemia; children and pre-menopausal women are most at risk.
Q 18Roughly how many people were affected by the anemia caused by this deficiency in 2015?
1.48 billion
A craving to eat ice, called pagophagia, is one of its more specific symptoms.
Q 19What is the medical name for the genetic iron-overload disorder?
Hemochromatosis
It stems from abnormally low levels of hepcidin, the regulator of iron entering the bloodstream.
Q 20Which chelating drug is used to bind and expel excess iron in cases of iron poisoning?
Deferoxamine
Sixty milligrams of iron per kilogram of body weight is considered a lethal dose.
Q 24Which Anatolian people appear to have been the first to master smelting iron from its ores?
The Hittites
The practice spread across the Near East after their empire fell around 1180 BC.
Q 25Roughly what temperature must a furnace reach to extract usable metal from iron ore?
1,500 °C
That is about 500 degrees hotter than is needed to smelt copper, which is why iron came later.
Q 26The Iron Age began when iron tools displaced alloys of which metal?
Copper
In some regions the transition from the Bronze Age happened only around 1200 BC.
Q 27In which country was cast iron first produced, in the 5th century BC?
China
It was hardly seen in Europe until the medieval period.
Q 28What defines cast iron chemically?
More than 2% carbon
Iron alloys with lower carbon content are called steel.
Q 29How much carbon does wrought iron contain?
Less than 0.05%
Its fibrous slag inclusions come from hot rolling the never-fully-molten metal.
Q 30Who established a coke-fired blast furnace in 1709, replacing charcoal?
Abraham Darby I
Cheap iron soon went into rails, ships and steam engine cylinders.