Materials Quizzes and Answers

Material Quiz I

1. What is the best known brand name of all the polytetrafluoroethylene based products?
2. Invented in New York in 1907, what was the name of the world's first fully synthetic plastic?






3. Which high-quality type of wool yarn derives its name from a village in Norfolk?
4. Cashmere is a luxury fiber obtained from which sort of animal?
5. Ninety percent of Europe's natural roofing slate comes from which country?
6. The Stone of Scone, used for centuries in the coronation of the monarchs of Scotland, is an oblong block of what type of rock?
7. Which waterproof fabric, composed of an outer layer of nylon and an inner layer of wool with air between them, was invented in 1951 by British inventor Joseph Kagan?
8. What name is lycra better known by in North America?
9. What are the two main metals used to make the alloy bronze?
10. What was originally developed in London in 1748 by Thomas Frye in order to compete with imported porcelain?
11. Which famous sculpture was the first in the world to be cast in aluminium?
12. Which British city's nickname is the Granite City, with its buildings incorporating locally quarried grey granite?

Answers:

1. Teflon
2. Bakelite
3. Worsted
4. Goats (cashmere goats)
5. Spain
6. Sandstone (red sandstone)
7. Gannex
8. Spandex (which is an anagram of 'expands')
9. Copper and tin
10. Bone china
11. The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain or Eros (commonly known, though mistakenly, as Eros)
12. Aberdeen

Material Quiz II

1. Which chemical element increases stainless steels corrosion resistance?
2. What name is given to the process of applying heat to ore in order to melt out a base metal?
3. Name the self-taught American chemist who developed vulcanized rubber?
4. What brand name was given in 1908 for borosilicate glass?
5. What was invented by Swiss chemist Jacques Brandenberger in trying to create a cloth that could repel liquids rather than absorb them after being inspired by seeing wine spilt on a restaurant's tablecloth in 1900?
6. The name of which material is translated from the Italian for "baked earth"?
7. Quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, what type of rock is Portland stone?
8. During the 19th-century, which British city was a key centre of the copper industry, earning it the nickname Copperopolis?
9. Name the the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron (it takes its name of from the inventor who took out a patent on the process in 1856)?
10. Which building material and word meaning mudbrick in Spanish, is also the name of the computer software company started in John Warnock's garage in 1982?
11. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is constructed of which material?
12. Which woven fabric, usually made from skin of the jute plant, is sometimes known as burlap?
13. What is the name of the species of European mountain goat Rupicapra rupicapra, that gives its name to a type of porous leather?
14. Which blend of wool and cotton, first woven in England in 1893, became the "first branded fabric in the world"?
15. Which invention by chemist Stephanie Kwolek, has by weight, five times the tensile strength of steel and is associated with the manufacture of bullet proof vests?

Answers:

1. Chromium
2. Smelting
3. Charles Goodyear
4. Pyrex
5. Cellophane
6. Terracotta
7. Limestone
8. Swansea
9. Bessemer process
10. Adobe
11. Marble
12. Hessian
13. Chamois
14. Viyella
15. Kevlar