CDS GK Questions 2026

Swavlamban is the Navy’s own Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Seminar, and the name of the event itself points to naval innovation.

For a swinging pendulum, the component of the bob's weight along its path always pulls it back towards the lowest point, so gravity acts as a restoring force.

A shoot grows upward, away from the pull of gravity, so it is negatively geotropic. A tropism is a directional growth movement of a plant part in response to a stimulus: towards the stimulus is positive, away from it is negative.

An object floats when its average density is less than that of the liquid and sinks when it is greater.

Specific heat is a property of the material, not of the size or shape of the particular body. It is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of unit mass (1 kg or 1 g) of a substance by one degree.

X-rays have wavelengths of roughly 0.01 to 10 nanometres, and a typical value is about one ångström (1 Å = 10⁻¹⁰ m = 0.1 nm).

Ice is simply water in its solid state, a single compound with the fixed formula H2O, so it is a pure substance, not a mixture.

Vegetable oils are hardened into margarine and vanaspati ghee by hydrogenation. Liquid vegetable oils are unsaturated: their fatty-acid chains contain carbon-carbon double bonds.

This matches the reactivity series, which lists metals from the most to the least reactive. Sodium is near the top: it reacts violently with cold water and is stored under kerosene.

Temporary hardness is caused by the bicarbonates (hydrogencarbonates) of calcium and magnesium dissolved in water. It is called temporary because it can be removed simply by boiling: on heating, the soluble bicarbonates break down into insoluble carbonates, or magnesium hydroxide, which settle out, and carbon dioxide escapes.

Quick lime is calcium oxide (CaO), which contains no carbonate, so it gives no carbon dioxide with an acid. Acids release carbon dioxide only from carbonates and hydrogencarbonates: the general reaction is metal carbonate plus acid gives salt, water and carbon dioxide.

Plaster of Paris is made from gypsum, not from common salt. When gypsum, calcium sulphate dihydrate (CaSO4·2H2O), is heated to about 373 K, it loses part of its water and becomes calcium sulphate hemihydrate (CaSO4·½H2O), which is Plaster of Paris; it sets hard again when mixed with water and is…

Anthracene sublimes on heating, while common salt does not, so heating the mixture separates them. Sublimation is the change of a solid directly into vapour without passing through the liquid state.

A honeybee sting injects methanoic acid, also called formic acid (HCOOH), which causes the burning pain and irritation.

Potassium hydroxide gives potassium soaps, which are softer and milder than sodium soaps. Saponification is the reaction in which an oil or fat is heated with an alkali to give soap, the sodium or potassium salt of a long-chain fatty acid, and glycerol.

Rain water is the purest natural form of water because it is formed by evaporation and condensation, a natural distillation.

The Ahmedabad mill strike of 1918 was Gandhi's satyagraha for industrial workers. A dispute arose between the cotton mill owners and the workers over the plague bonus, which the owners wanted to withdraw.

Balakot, along with Nageshwar in Gujarat, is described as a specialised centre for making shell objects. Both settlements lay near the coast, where shells were easy to collect, and excavations there have found large amounts of shell waste, unfinished pieces and finished items.

Surge pricing is a form of dynamic pricing in which the price moves up when demand rises faster than the available supply.

The Constitution gives the Supreme Court no such jurisdiction; the collegium is only the system by which senior judges recommend appointments.