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50 free Neon trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Neon trivia covers the gas that gave us the neon sign and rather more besides. Element number 10 was discovered in London in June 1898 by William Ramsay and Morris Travers, who boiled liquid air and watched a tube blaze crimson; Ramsay's son suggested the name, from the Greek for 'new'. It is the fifth most abundant element in the universe and yet so rare on Earth that a pound of it takes 88,000 pounds of processed gas to make. This quiz runs from the chemistry (the noble gases, the three stable isotopes J. J. Thomson stumbled on in 1913, the element with no confirmed compounds, the triple point that anchors a temperature scale) to the culture: Georges Claude's demonstration at the 1910 Paris Motor Show, the Cinzano sign over Paris, the two Packard signs that stopped traffic in Los Angeles, why 'neon' blue tubes are actually argon and mercury, the red line of the helium-neon laser, Las Vegas and its Neon Boneyard, and the 2022 shortage that reminded chipmakers that most of the world's neon came from Odesa. Easy questions suit anyone who remembers the periodic table; the expert tier is for chemists and sign-benders. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on neon, neon lighting and their discoverers, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is neon's atomic number?
10
Its symbol is Ne, and it is the second noble gas after helium.
Q 02What colour does neon glow in a discharge tube?
Reddish-orange
Blue 'neon' tubes actually contain argon and mercury, and phosphor coatings supply the rest of the palette.
Q 03Which two chemists discovered neon in London in 1898?
William Ramsay and Morris Travers
They boiled off liquid air gas by gas over six weeks, finding krypton first, then neon, then xenon.
Q 04The name 'neon' comes from a Greek word meaning what?
New
Krypton means 'hidden' and xenon 'stranger'; the name for neon was suggested by Ramsay's son.
Q 05Who suggested the name 'neon'?
The chemist's young son
Travers wrote that 'the blaze of crimson light from the tube told its own story and was a sight to dwell upon and never forget'.
Q 06Which two other noble gases did Ramsay and Travers discover in the same year as neon?
Krypton and xenon
Krypton came first, in the same six-week series of experiments; xenon followed in September.
Q 07What did William Ramsay receive in 1904 for discovering the inert gases of the air?
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
His collaborator Lord Rayleigh took the physics prize the same year for their discovery of argon.
Q 08Morris Travers, nicknamed 'Rare Gas Travers', later became the founding director of which institution?
The Indian Institute of Science
He went out to Bangalore on Ramsay's recommendation after teaching at University College, Bristol.
Q 09What did Ramsay and Travers mistakenly announce alongside neon as 'metargon'?
Argon contaminated with carbon monoxide
It had roughly argon's density but a different spectrum; later spectroscopy exposed the contamination.
Q 10Which physicist's 1913 experiment with neon ions produced the first evidence of stable isotopes?
J. J. Thomson
He saw two patches of light on a photographic plate, showing that some neon atoms were heavier; his device was a crude mass spectrometer.
Q 11How many stable isotopes does neon have?
Three
Neon-20 makes up about 90.5%, neon-22 about 9.25% and neon-21 a mere 0.27%.
Q 12Where does neon rank in cosmic abundance among the elements?
Fifth
Only hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon are more common in the universe; it is made by fusing carbon in massive stars.
Q 13Roughly what fraction of Earth's atmosphere by volume is neon?
About 18 parts per million
That is one part in 55,000, which is why it is far pricier than helium: air is its only source.
Q 14Why is neon so rare on Earth despite being abundant in the universe?
Q 21Why did Claude's early attempt to sell neon tubes for home lighting fail?
Homeowners objected to the colour
His associate Jacques Fonsèque switched to advertising signs in 1912 and was instantly more successful.
Q 22Which vermouth brand's neon sign lit up the Paris night sky by 1913?
Cinzano
By 1919 the entrance to the Paris Opera was outlined in neon too.
Q 23Neon signs reached the United States in 1923 with two signs bought by a dealership selling which cars?
Packard
Earle C. Anthony paid $1,250 apiece for the Los Angeles signs, which reportedly stopped traffic.
It is light, volatile and forms no anchoring compounds
Its volatility let it escape the planetesimals that formed the warm inner planets.
Q 15How is neon obtained commercially?
Fractional distillation of liquefied air
About 88,000 pounds of gas mixture must be processed to yield a single pound of pure neon.
Q 16Neon is theorised to be what, among all the elements?
The least chemically reactive
It is the only noble gas for which no compound has ever been definitively confirmed.
Q 17On the Allen electronegativity scale, which element ranks as the most electronegative?
Neon
The familiar Pauling scale cannot rate neon because it relies on bond energies that neon never forms.
Q 18Neon's triple point, at about 24.56 kelvin, serves as what?
A defining reference for the 1990 international temperature scale
Liquid neon has over 40 times the refrigerating capacity of liquid helium per unit volume.
Q 19Which French engineer demonstrated modern neon tube lighting in December 1910?
Georges Claude
His firm Air Liquide had been producing neon as a by-product of air liquefaction since 1902.
Q 20At which event was neon tube lighting first presented in its modern form, in December 1910?
The Paris Motor Show
He was sometimes called 'the Edison of France'.
Q 24What gave the French inventor of neon lighting a near-monopoly on US signs until the early 1930s?
A 1915 US patent on the electrode design
His company Claude Neon Lights sold franchises to sign-makers across the country.
Q 25What happened to the inventor of neon lighting after the Second World War?
He was imprisoned for collaborating with the German occupiers
He was stripped of his honours in 1945; earlier he had built the first ocean thermal energy plant, in Cuba.
Q 26Where did the inventor of neon lighting build the first prototype ocean thermal energy plant in 1930?
Cuba
It generated 22 kilowatts; a second plant in 1935 was mounted on a cargo ship.
Q 27What gas mixture do blue 'neon' signs actually contain?
Argon and mercury
The mixture emits ultraviolet light, which makes fluorescent phosphor coatings glow in many colours.
Q 28Roughly what voltage do neon signs operate at?
2 to 15 kilovolts
Tiny neon glow lamps, by contrast, run at 100–250 volts and were the forerunners of plasma screens.
Q 29Who wrote in 1965 that Las Vegas's skyline is made 'neither of buildings... nor of trees... but signs'?
Tom Wolfe
By 1940 there were nearly 2,000 small neon shops in America and Times Square blazed with Douglas Leigh's designs.
Q 30What is the outdoor collection of retired Las Vegas signs at the city's sign museum called?
The Boneyard
The museum's visitor centre is the rescued lobby of the La Concha Motel, and it opened fully in 2012.