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50 free Sixth Grade trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free sixth grade trivia questions with answers. These sixth grade trivia questions follow the topics most 6th graders actually study: ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and China; the layers of the Earth, plate tectonics and the water cycle; cells and photosynthesis; ratios, percentages, primes and the order of operations; world geography; the basics of the US Constitution; parts of speech and figurative language; and the novels on the class reading list, from Percy Jackson to Hatchet. They are pitched at 11 and 12 year olds, so most are answerable by a curious sixth grader and the rest make good teachable stumpers. Teachers can use them for a Friday review game, and families for a car-ride quiz where the kids finally beat the grown-ups. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia and primary sources before publishing, so the answer key is safe to read straight to the class.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Mesopotamia means the land 'between' what?
Two rivers
The Tigris and Euphrates flow through what is now Iraq, where the Sumerians invented cuneiform writing and the wheel.
Q 02Which ancient people developed cuneiform, one of the world's first writing systems?
The Sumerians
It began as picture symbols pressed into clay around the late 4th millennium BC.
Q 03The Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest written law codes, comes from which region?
Ancient Mesopotamia
It was composed around 1755-1750 BC and carved on a tall stone pillar.
Q 04The Rosetta Stone carries the same decree in three scripts: hieroglyphs, Demotic and which language?
Ancient Greek
French soldiers found it in 1799 and Jean-François Champollion used it to crack hieroglyphs in 1822.
Q 05The Great Pyramid of Giza was built as a tomb for which pharaoh?
Khufu
It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still largely standing, and stayed the world's tallest structure for more than 3,700 years.
Q 06Which Greek city-state is credited with founding the world's first democracy?
Athens
Ancient Greece was made up of several hundred independent city-states, or poleis, separated by mountains.
Q 07The Parthenon, the great temple on the Acropolis, was dedicated to which goddess?
Athena
It was built during the city's Golden Age in the 5th century BC.
Q 08The ancient Olympic Games were held every four years at Olympia in honour of which god?
Zeus
The modern Olympic flame is still lit there, using sunlight and a mirror in front of the Temple of Hera.
Q 09Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC on a date known as what?
The Ides of March
His adopted heir Octavian became Augustus, Rome's first emperor, in 27 BC.
Q 10According to legend, which twins founded Rome in 753 BC?
Romulus and Remus
The Western Roman Empire lasted until AD 476, when the emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed.
Q 11Roughly how long is the Great Wall of China, counting all its sections?
About 21,000 km
The best-known stretches were built by the Ming dynasty, and despite the myth it cannot be seen from the Moon with the naked eye.
Q 12The Terracotta Army was discovered in 1974 by farmers doing what?
Digging a well
More than 8,000 clay soldiers were buried to guard China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the afterlife.
Q 13Which layer of the Earth is the thickest?
The mantle
The mantle reaches down about 2,890 km; the crust beneath your feet is only 5 to 70 km thick.
Q 21Why do most plant leaves look the colour they do?
Chlorophyll reflects that light
Chlorophyll soaks up red and blue light for energy and bounces the green back to your eyes.
Q 22Which part of the cell holds the chromosomes and DNA?
The nucleus
Robert Hooke named cells in 1665 because the tiny boxes in cork reminded him of monks' rooms in a monastery.
Q 23Which two structures do plant cells have that animal cells lack?
A cell wall and chloroplasts
The wall is made largely of cellulose and the chloroplasts hold the chlorophyll for photosynthesis.
Q 14Earth's inner core is a solid ball made mostly of iron and which other metal?
Nickel
The outer core around it is liquid, and its churning creates Earth's magnetic field.
Q 15Which scientist proposed the idea of continental drift in 1912?
Alfred Wegener
His idea became modern plate tectonics in the 1960s; plates creep along at about the speed your fingernails grow.
Q 16What is the zone around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world's active volcanoes sit?
The Ring of Fire
Earth's lithosphere is broken into seven or eight major plates plus many smaller ones.
Q 17In the water cycle, what is the name for water vapour turning back into liquid droplets to form clouds?
Condensation
About 97% of Earth's water sits in the oceans, and the Sun's energy drives the whole cycle.
Q 18Which type of rock forms when magma or lava cools and hardens?
Igneous
Granite cools slowly underground while basalt forms from lava at the surface; sedimentary rocks are the ones that hold fossils.
Q 19Marble is a metamorphic rock formed when heat and pressure change which rock?
Limestone
Slate is made the same way from shale; the endless changing of one rock type into another is called the rock cycle.
Q 20Which gas do plants take in from the air to carry out photosynthesis?
Carbon dioxide
Combined with water and sunlight it makes sugar, and oxygen is released as the leftover.
Q 24In a food chain, what are the plants and algae at the very bottom called?
Producers
Only about ten percent of the energy at one level passes to the next, which is why food chains rarely go beyond five levels.
Q 25Which of these lists the eight planets in the correct order from the Sun?
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
The four inner planets are rocky, the four outer ones are giants, and the asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter.
Q 26Roughly what share of the Solar System's total mass is in the Sun?
About 99.9%
Jupiter and Saturn together make up more than 90% of what is left over.
Q 27Using the order of operations, what is 1 - 2 x 3^4?
-161
Exponents come first (3^4 = 81), then multiplication (2 x 81 = 162), then subtraction; PEMDAS is the usual memory aid.
Q 28In the mnemonic PEMDAS, what does the P stand for?
Parentheses
Multiplication and division share the same rank and are worked left to right, as are addition and subtraction.
Q 29Which of these numbers is prime?
29
A prime has no factors except 1 and itself; 1 is not counted as prime, and Euclid proved there are infinitely many primes.
Q 30The word 'percent' comes from Latin words meaning what?
By a hundred
So 45% is simply 45 out of every 100, or 0.45.