Static GK carries most of the 100 marks of the CDS General Knowledge paper. Of the 120 questions in the CDS (II) 2026 paper, about 20 were on Indian Polity, about 20 on the History of India, about 15 on Geography and the environment, about 10 on the Indian Economy and about 37 on Physics, Chemistry and Biology, which makes CDS the most science-heavy General Knowledge paper among the major recruitment exams. Polity questions test writs, the NHRC, electoral systems, disqualification of legislators, GST and delimitation. History runs from the Upanishads and the Shunga dynasty to Vijayanagara, temple architecture, the Sylhet referendum and the SNDP Yogam. Geography asks about the atmosphere, earthquakes and tsunamis, Ramsar sites, mangroves and World Heritage sites. Science stays at school level but expects reasoning: a lens problem, a magnetic field direction, molarity versus molality, what cooking soda is, how enzymes act. This page holds GK24's topic-wise GK notes for CDS, written as short facts and tables so that a topic can be revised in one sitting. Read a topic, then solve its previous-year questions and quiz on this site to check what stayed with you.
Name the filtration units of the excretory system in human.
The nephron is the structural and functional unit of the kidney, and each human kidney holds about one million of them.
Read the full explanation →Coral bleaching is caused mainly by the loss of which organism from the tissue of the coral polyp?
A reef building coral polyp lives in a close partnership with single celled algae called zooxanthellae that live inside its own tissue.
Read the full explanation →The frozen subsoil that remains permanently frozen and prevents the growth of trees in the tundra biome is called ______.
In the tundra only a thin upper layer of the ground thaws in the brief summer; below it the soil stays frozen through the year, and this permanently frozen subsoil is called permafrost.
Read the full explanation →The final, stable and self perpetuating community reached at the end of an ecological succession is called the ______.
Succession is a directional process: each community changes the place a little, making it fit for the next, until a community arrives that is in balance with the climate of the region and can replace itself generation after generation without being replaced by another.
Read the full explanation →Secondary succession proceeds faster than primary succession mainly because ______.
Primary succession starts on a surface that has never held life, a cooled lava flow, a bare rock or a fresh sand dune, and the slowest part of the whole process there is the making of soil: rock has to be weathered grain by grain and organic matter has to…
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is the pioneer community in a xerarch succession that begins on a bare rock?
A bare rock offers no soil, almost no water and no shelter, and only an organism that can survive long spells of drying and can hold on to bare stone can settle there.
Read the full explanation →The temperate grassland of North America is known as the ______.
The temperate grassland is the same biome the world over, short nutritious grass with almost no tree, but each continent gives it a local name, and the pairs are asked directly in examinations.
Read the full explanation →Which is the largest terrestrial biome on the earth?
The taiga forms an almost unbroken belt of needle leaved softwood trees, mainly pine, spruce, fir and larch, right across the northern parts of Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia, and this belt covers a greater area of land than any other biome.
Read the full explanation →Which one of the following natural regions is known as the Land of Big Games?
The savanna is a tropical grassland with tall coarse grass and scattered flat topped trees, and its wet season produces an enormous crop of grass.
Read the full explanation →Which one among the following is not a coral reef island?
Kyushu is one of the four main islands of the Japanese archipelago and is of volcanic origin, built by the eruptions of an island arc where one plate dives beneath another; Mount Aso on it has one of the largest volcanic calderas in the world.
Read the full explanation →The largest barrier reef system in the world is found at _______.
The Great Barrier Reef stretches for well over two thousand kilometres along the Queensland coast in the Coral Sea, off the north eastern shore of Australia, and is the largest structure on earth built by living organisms.
Read the full explanation →Sir Thomas Roe came to India as the ambassador of which English king, and to which Mughal emperor's court?
Sir Thomas Roe reached India in the second decade of the seventeenth century as the formal ambassador of James the First of England and spent about three years at Jahangir's court, seeking a firm commercial treaty for the East India Company; he obtained trading concessions but not the treaty he…
Read the full explanation →Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi, the envoy of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, visited Vijayanagara during the reign of ______.
Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi came from Herat in the fifteenth century as the envoy of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, and his account, part of the work Matla-us-Sadain, describes the great fortifications of Vijayanagara in seven concentric walls, the crowded bazaars, the jewel market and the court ceremony, and it is…
Read the full explanation →Kitab-ul-Hind, also known as Tahqiq-i-Hind, was written by ______.
Al-Biruni wrote this work in Arabic in the eleventh century as a careful account of Indian religion, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, law, custom and measurement, setting out each belief as its own followers held it and comparing it with Greek and Islamic learning; he had learned Sanskrit for the purpose, and…
Read the full explanation →The Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hien visited India during the reign of which ruler?
Fa-Hien travelled overland into India at the close of the fourth century and stayed for several years, coming chiefly to collect the texts of Buddhist monastic discipline; his account, known as the Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms, notes the charitable rest houses and hospitals, the mildness of punishments and the…
Read the full explanation →Megasthenes, who wrote the account called Indica, came to India as the ambassador of ______.
After Alexander's death his general Seleucus Nicator took the eastern part of the empire, was defeated by Chandragupta Maurya and made peace with him, and sent Megasthenes to his court as ambassador.
Read the full explanation →Who among the following was associated with the Mughal Court as a physician to Prince Dara Shikoh?
Bernier was a French physician who spent about twelve years in India in the middle of the seventeenth century and was attached to Prince Dara Shikoh as his physician, later serving the noble Danishmand Khan; he therefore watched the war of succession among Shah Jahan's sons from close quarters.
Read the full explanation →The medieval traveller Marco Polo was from:
Marco Polo belonged to a family of merchants of the Republic of Venice, then the leading trading city of the Mediterranean, and he travelled overland to the court of Kublai Khan in China, returning by sea at the end of the thirteenth century.
Read the full explanation →Who among the following travellers came to India from Uzbekistan in the 11th century?
Abu Rayhan al-Biruni was born in Khwarezm, a region that lies in modern Uzbekistan, and came to India in the eleventh century in the train of Mahmud of Ghazni.
Read the full explanation →During whose reign did the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visit India in the 14th century?
Ibn Battuta, a qazi from Tangier in Morocco, reached Delhi in the 1330s, and the Sultan, impressed by his learning, appointed him qazi of the capital and later sent him as an envoy to the court of China.
Read the full explanation →