Accidental Inventions & Discoveries Quiz – Printable Version
20 multiple-choice questions with an explained answer key, ready to print.
Print the sheet (or save it as a PDF from the print window), hand it out, then mark it together using the answer page: every answer is explained. Perfect for a party, a birthday, a classroom, a care home or a team activity.
Name: ………………………………Score: ……… / 20
- According to the most famous account, which sweet melted in Percy Spencer's pocket near a radar, inspiring the microwave oven?
- A. A mint
- B. A piece of chewing gum
- C. An ice-cream cone
- D. A chocolate bar
- Which everyday need gave Art Fry the idea of using his colleague Spencer Silver's 'failed' glue?
- A. Sticking photos into an album
- B. Mending his glasses
- C. Marking pages in his choir hymn book without the bookmarks falling out
- D. Sealing envelopes
- Where was laminated glass, invented after a dropped flask failed to shatter, first widely used?
- A. In car windscreens from 1900
- B. In cathedral stained glass
- C. In zoo aquariums
- D. In the eyepieces of First World War gas masks
- How did chemist Constantin Fahlberg discover saccharin in 1879?
- A. By finding his bread strangely sweet, having forgotten to wash his hands in the lab
- B. By deliberately tasting all his products
- C. By watching bees drawn to a flask
- D. By burning sugar
- At which 1904 event was the waffle ice-cream cone supposedly popularised, when an ice-cream seller ran out of dishes?
- A. The St. Louis World's Fair
- B. The first modern Olympic Games
- C. The opening of the Eiffel Tower
- D. Edward VII's coronation
- Where does the word 'brandy', a wine spirit born to make transport easier, come from?
- A. From the Dutch 'brandewijn', 'burnt wine'
- B. From the name of an English merchant, Mr Brandy
- C. From 'brandish', as it was raised for toasts
- D. From a Spanish town
- How was John Pemberton's Coca-Cola presented when it was launched in 1886?
- A. As a sports drink
- B. As a children's soda
- C. As a tonic drink with medicinal virtues, sold in pharmacies
- D. As a dessert wine
- During which war was Super Glue used in emergencies to close battlefield wounds?
- A. The American Civil War
- B. The First World War
- C. The Hundred Years' War
- D. The Vietnam War
- How old was William Perkin when he accidentally created mauveine, the first synthetic dye, in 1856?
- A. 18
- B. 45
- C. 30
- D. 70
- Which event supposedly led Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, to create his famous prizes?
- A. A newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, calling him 'the merchant of death'
- B. The death of his dog
- C. An explosion in his garden
- D. A request from the King of Sweden
- What did Wilson Greatbatch set out to build in 1956 when a resistor mistake led him to the implantable pacemaker?
- A. A portable radio
- B. A lie detector
- C. An electronic watch
- D. A device to record heartbeats
- Who had the idea of turning a wallpaper-cleaning product into children's modelling dough, the future Play-Doh?
- A. An astronaut on a mission
- B. A pastry chef
- C. A famous sculptor
- D. A schoolteacher, the manufacturer's sister-in-law, who used it in class
- What does the name of the lubricant 'WD-40' stand for?
- A. 'Wonder Device' for 40 uses
- B. 'Water Displacement, 40th formula': the fortieth attempt at an anti-moisture product
- C. Its inventor's initials and age
- D. 'World Distribution' in 40 countries
- What is 19 April 1943, the day chemist Albert Hofmann fully felt the effects of LSD, nicknamed?
- A. 'Blue Monday'
- B. 'Lab Day'
- C. 'Mushroom Day'
- D. 'Bicycle Day', because he rode home by bike
- Which British cocktail is said to have been born from quinine taken against malaria in colonial India?
- A. The mojito
- B. The piña colada
- C. The gin and tonic
- D. The bloody mary
- Which fashionable 19th-century parties drew attention to ether's numbing effects?
- A. Masked balls at the opera
- B. 'Ether frolics', where people inhaled ether for fun
- C. Boxing contests
- D. Seances
- What fun property does Silly Putty, born from synthetic rubber research, have?
- A. It changes colour in the sun
- B. It bounces like a ball but slowly flows if left to rest
- C. It glows in the dark
- D. It smells of strawberry when warm
- Which French engineer had the idea of coating frying pans with Teflon, at his wife's suggestion?
- A. Louis Renault
- B. Gustave Eiffel
- C. Jacques Cousteau
- D. Marc Grégoire, founder of Tefal
- In 1964, what did Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson first suspect was causing the persistent noise picked up by their antenna?
- A. A pirate radio station
- B. A Soviet satellite
- C. New York's power grid
- D. Pigeon droppings from birds nesting in the antenna
- Where does the name 'ozone', given in 1840 by chemist Christian Schönbein, come from?
- A. From the Greek 'ozein', to smell, because of its odour after electrical discharges
- B. From 'oxygen in a high zone'
- C. From the name of a Swiss village
- D. From the Latin word for 'blue'
Answer key — Accidental Inventions & Discoveries Quiz
- D. A chocolate barSpencer then popped popcorn and made an egg explode in front of the magnetron.
- C. Marking pages in his choir hymn book without the bookmarks falling outIn 1968 Silver had created a glue too weak for its intended use but repositionable.
- D. In the eyepieces of First World War gas masksAround 1903, French chemist Édouard Bénédictus dropped a flask coated inside with a cellulose nitrate film: the glass cracked without flying apart.
- A. By finding his bread strangely sweet, having forgotten to wash his hands in the labThe taste came from a coal-tar derivative he had handled that day.
- A. The St. Louis World's FairAccording to legend, a neighbouring waffle seller rolled his waffles into cones to help the ice-cream vendor out.
- A. From the Dutch 'brandewijn', 'burnt wine'Dutch merchants distilled wine to reduce its volume and keep it better on long voyages, intending to dilute it on arrival.
- C. As a tonic drink with medicinal virtues, sold in pharmaciesPemberton, a pharmacist and wounded former soldier, promoted his syrup against headaches and fatigue.
- D. The Vietnam WarDiscovered during the Second World War, cyanoacrylate was rejected because it stuck to everything.
- A. 18The young chemist was trying to make quinine against malaria and got a black sludge…
- A. A newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, calling him 'the merchant of death'In 1888 it was his brother Ludvig who died, but a French newspaper thought it was Alfred.
- D. A device to record heartbeatsWith the wrong resistor, his circuit began emitting short, regular pulses resembling a heartbeat.
- D. A schoolteacher, the manufacturer's sister-in-law, who used it in classWith the arrival of gas heating, less sooty than coal, the dough used to clean soot off walls stopped selling.
- B. 'Water Displacement, 40th formula': the fortieth attempt at an anti-moisture productIn 1953 a small San Diego company was trying to protect missiles from corrosion by driving out moisture.
- D. 'Bicycle Day', because he rode home by bikeThree days earlier he had accidentally absorbed a tiny amount of the molecule and felt strange effects.
- C. The gin and tonicBritish soldiers and colonists had to swallow very bitter quinine from cinchona bark.
- B. 'Ether frolics', where people inhaled ether for funParticipants staggered, laughed and bumped into things without feeling pain.
- B. It bounces like a ball but slowly flows if left to restDuring the Second World War researchers wanted to replace natural rubber.
- D. Marc Grégoire, founder of TefalGrégoire coated his fishing tackle with Teflon so the line would untangle more easily.
- D. Pigeon droppings from birds nesting in the antennaThey cleaned the antenna and chased the pigeons away, but the noise remained, coming from every direction.
- A. From the Greek 'ozein', to smell, because of its odour after electrical dischargesSchönbein had noticed the sharp smell hanging around electrical machines and after thunderstorms.