40 Technology Trivia Questions for Kids
The easiest technology questions in the game, picked for younger players. Every one comes with the answer and a short explanation of why it is right.
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Easy Technology Questions and Answers
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Which manufacturing process is also known as additive manufacturing?
3D printing
Additive manufacturing builds an object layer by layer from digital instructions, which is why 3D printing is its familiar name. Subtractive processes such as milling instead remove material from a larger piece.
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Which company publishes Photoshop?
Adobe
Adobe publishes the Photoshop image-editing application.
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Which company acquired Twitch in 2014?
Amazon
The deal was worth about 970 million dollars in cash, announced in August 2014, making it Amazon's biggest acquisition to that point in its 21-year history. Google had reportedly agreed to buy Twitch itself for a similar price just weeks earlier before Amazon stepped in.
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Which startup, founded by Andy Rubin, did Google buy in 2005?
Android Inc.
Google paid a reported $50 million for Android Inc. in 2005, bringing Andy Rubin and his small team in-house. The software they were building shipped commercially three years later on the T-Mobile G1.
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What does API stand for?
Application Programming Interface
An API is a defined way for software components to request data or actions from one another. It lets a program use a service without needing to know how that service is implemented internally.
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Which number base does a computer use at the hardware level?
2
Each binary digit corresponds to a transistor switched on or off, since two clear voltage states are far easier for a circuit to distinguish reliably than ten. Bytes group eight of these bits together, giving 256 possible values.
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How many bits are in one byte?
8
A byte contains eight bits, and each bit can hold a 0 or 1. Eight bits allow 256 possible combinations, from 0 through 255 when interpreted as an unsigned number.
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What kind of connection is Bluetooth?
Short-range wireless communication
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless communication technology used to connect devices such as phones, headphones, keyboards, and speakers. It operates in the 2.4 GHz radio band.
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What does a CAPTCHA help determine about a visitor?
Whether a user is human
CAPTCHA is designed to distinguish human users from automated programs.
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What type of work was COBOL designed primarily to handle?
Business applications
COBOL was created for business and administrative data processing, including banking and large record systems. Its readable, English-like syntax helped it spread through industry.
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What was the .com domain originally intended to identify?
commercial organizations
The .com top-level domain was created for commercial organizations. It is now open to broad registration, so a .com address does not by itself prove that a site is a business.
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What translates high-level source code into machine code or bytecode before execution?
A compiler program
A compiler takes a whole program written in a high-level language and translates it ahead of time into machine code or bytecode that runs later. An interpreter instead works through the source line by line while the program runs, an assembler starts from assembly language, and a transpiler produces source code in another high-level language.
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What small piece of data does a website store in your browser so it can recognise you on your next visit?
A cookie
A cookie is a small piece of data a site asks your browser to keep, and the browser sends it back automatically with every later request to that site. That is how a site keeps you logged in, remembers a language setting, or holds a shopping basket between pages.
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What does CPU stand for?
Central Processing Unit
The central processing unit executes instructions and coordinates much of a computer's work. Its performance is often discussed in clock speed and number of cores.
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What does CSS stand for in web development?
Cascading Style Sheets
CSS controls the presentation of structured documents, including colors, spacing, fonts, and layout. The word cascading describes how rules from different sources are combined.
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What does DNS translate a website's domain name into?
An IP address
The domain name system works like a phone book for the internet. People remember names, but machines route by number, so DNS converts a name such as example.com into the numeric IP address of the computer that answers for it before the connection is made.
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In an email address, what does the @ sign separate?
The user and domain parts
The @ sign separates the local user portion from the domain portion of an email address.
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What transformation does encryption apply to readable data?
Turns it into ciphertext only a key can undo
The idea goes back to simple substitution ciphers such as the Caesar cipher, which shifted each letter a fixed number of places; modern algorithms like AES scramble data with keys as long as 256 bits.
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Which LAN standard commonly carries data over network cables?
Ethernet
Ethernet is the most widely used LAN standard for sending data over network cables. Modern Ethernet commonly uses twisted-pair copper or fiber-optic cables and can support speeds from megabits to hundreds of gigabits per second.
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Which company acquired WhatsApp in 2014?
Facebook
Facebook, Inc. acquired WhatsApp in 2014.
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Nokia, later the world's biggest phone maker, began in 1865 as a wood pulp mill in which country?
Finland
Fredrik Idestam opened a pulp mill in southern Finland in 1865 and a second beside the Nokianvirta river. The town of Nokia gave the company its name, and it moved into telecommunications a century later.
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What network security device filters unauthorized network access using configured rules?
Firewall
A firewall filters network traffic according to configured security rules, allowing authorized connections while blocking unauthorized access. Firewalls can examine details such as addresses, ports, and protocols to decide whether traffic should pass.
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In which year did Apple release the first iPhone?
2007
The first iPhone was unveiled in January 2007 and went on sale that June.
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Which pixel dimensions define Full HD resolution?
1920x1080
The p denotes progressive scan: every line of the frame is drawn in one pass, unlike the interlaced 1080i broadcast standard, where alternating lines are drawn in two separate passes.
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Which company acquired YouTube in 2006?
Google
Google completed its acquisition of YouTube in 2006.
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What does GPS stand for?
Global Positioning System
GPS is a satellite-based navigation system that allows a receiver to calculate its position and time. A receiver normally uses signals from multiple satellites to determine a location.
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What does GPU stand for?
Graphics Processing Unit
A GPU is designed to perform many calculations in parallel, especially those needed to draw images and video. Modern GPUs are also widely used for scientific computing and machine learning.
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What does GIF stand for?
Graphics Interchange Format
CompuServe introduced the Graphics Interchange Format in 1987 to move colour images between computers over slow connections.
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Which storage device traditionally records data on spinning magnetic platters?
hard disk drive
A hard disk drive stores data magnetically on rotating platters read by moving heads. Solid-state drives use flash memory instead, with no spinning parts.
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What does HDMI stand for?
High-Definition Multimedia Interface
HDMI carries digital audio and video between compatible devices such as consoles, computers, and televisions. A single cable can carry both kinds of signal.
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Which markup language structures a web page’s content?
HTML
HTML structures the content of a web page.
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What does the HTTP status code 404 conventionally mean?
Not Found
A 404 response indicates that the server cannot find the requested resource. It is different from 401, which indicates missing authentication credentials, and 503, which indicates temporary unavailability.
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What does HTTPS do to web traffic between a browser and a server?
Encrypts data in transit
HTTPS runs ordinary HTTP through an encryption layer called TLS, the successor to SSL, which also checks a certificate to confirm the server's identity before any data changes hands.
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In HTTPS, what does the final letter S traditionally stand for?
Secure
HTTPS is HTTP carried over a protected connection, commonly using TLS. The protection helps provide confidentiality and authentication between a browser and a server.
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What does HTTP stand for?
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the set of rules a browser and a web server follow to request and deliver pages. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first version at CERN around 1990.
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What does JPEG stand for?
Joint Photographic Experts Group
JPEG is named after the group that developed the image-compression standard. JPEG compression is usually lossy, trading some image detail for much smaller files.
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What does LAN stand for?
Local Area Network
A local area network connects devices within a limited area such as a home, office, or school. Ethernet and Wi-Fi are common ways devices join a LAN.
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Who created the Linux kernel?
Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds began developing the Linux kernel in 1991, and contributors around the world have expanded it ever since. Linux is the kernel at the core of many servers, supercomputers, and embedded devices.
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What animal appears in the Linux mascot, Tux?
penguin
Tux is a penguin associated with the Linux kernel. The mascot was designed by Larry Ewing after Linux creator Linus Torvalds expressed a fondness for penguins.
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Which interface idea did the Macintosh do most to popularise?
The desktop metaphor
The Macintosh took the desktop metaphor mainstream: a screen treated like the top of a desk, with overlapping windows, folders, icons and a wastebasket, all pointed at with a mouse. The ideas were worked out at Xerox PARC, but the 1984 Mac put them in front of ordinary buyers, and every mainstream operating system since has copied the arrangement.
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