Static GK carries most of the General Knowledge marks in the defence exams, and science carries the largest share of it. In NDA & NA, Physics, Chemistry and General Science are about half of the 400 marks of Part B, and History, the freedom movement and Geography are about 20% each, as per the notice. In the CDS (II) 2026 General Knowledge paper, GK24 counted about 37 science questions, about 20 each on Polity and History, about 15 on Geography and environment and about 10 on the Economy; this count is guidance, not an official break-up. The Army's Agniveer CEE gives 15 of its 50 General Duty questions to General Knowledge and 15 to General Science, which covers cells, the human body, plants and animals and common epidemics. Its GK list names history, culture and geography of India and its neighbours, the Constitution, inventions and discoveries, books and authors, and the Indian Armed Forces. This page holds GK24's topic-wise GK notes and GK questions tagged for NDA, CDS and Agniveer, in English and Hindi: General Science, Indian History, Art and Culture, Indian Polity, Geography, Indian Economy and Static GK. Read one topic at a sitting, then solve its questions and the previous-year questions of your exam to see what stayed with you.
The flat-topped seamounts found on the ocean floor are called
A seamount is an isolated volcanic peak rising from the deep sea floor without reaching the surface; where such a peak once stood at sea level and had its top worn flat by waves before subsiding, it is called a guyot.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following water bodies records the highest salinity?
The correct answer is C, Lake Van in Turkey, which records a salinity of about 330 parts per thousand, the highest figure given in standard textbooks.
Read the full explanation →What is the average salinity of ocean water and which salt contributes the largest share of it?
Salinity is expressed in parts per thousand, so 35 ppt means 35 grams of dissolved salt in a kilogram of sea water.
Read the full explanation →The highest tidal range in the world is recorded at
The correct answer is B, the Bay of Fundy, between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in Canada, where the funnel shape of the bay and the length of the inlet make the incoming tide pile up to a range of the order of fifteen to sixteen metres.
Read the full explanation →Spring tides occur on which days of the lunar month?
On these days the sun, the moon and the earth lie in a straight line, a position called syzygy, so the pulls of the sun and the moon act together and the tidal range is at its greatest; spring tides therefore occur twice in a lunar month and have nothing…
Read the full explanation →Which division of the ocean floor is the most important economically, holding the richest fishing grounds and most offshore petroleum?
It is the gently sloping, shallow margin of the continent, extending to a depth of about 200 metres with a gradient of one degree or less and an average width of about seventy to eighty kilometres, and it makes up roughly 7.5 per cent of the ocean area.
Read the full explanation →The deepest point of the earth's surface, the Challenger Deep, lies in which ocean trench?
The correct answer is B, the Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific Ocean, whose Challenger Deep reaches a depth of about eleven kilometres and is the deepest known point on the earth's surface.
Read the full explanation →With reference to the latitudinal distribution of salinity in the oceans, which of the following statements is correct?
I. The highest salinity is recorded in the equatorial regions.
II. The salinity of the oceans of the Northern Hemisphere is higher than that of the Southern Hemisphere.
Statement I is wrong because the equatorial belt receives very heavy rainfall and has high cloud cover, so the surface water there is diluted; the highest salinity in the open ocean is recorded in the subtropical high pressure belts, roughly between twenty and thirty degrees of latitude, where skies are…
Read the full explanation →A piece of ice floating in a glass of water melts completely. What happens to the level of the water in the glass?
While the ice floats it displaces a volume of water whose weight equals the weight of the ice, by the law of flotation.
Read the full explanation →The viscosity of a liquid and the viscosity of a gas behave in which way when the temperature is raised?
In a liquid, viscosity comes chiefly from cohesion between molecules; heating weakens that cohesion, so the layers slide past one another more easily and the viscosity falls, which is why engine oil becomes thinner as the engine warms and why honey flows freely when it is warmed.
Read the full explanation →The spherical shape of a small liquid drop is due to
Cohesive forces pull the molecules at the surface of a liquid inward, so the surface behaves like a stretched membrane and takes the smallest area that can enclose the given volume; for a fixed volume the shape of least surface area is a sphere, which is why a free drop…
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is the SI unit of the coefficient of viscosity?
The correct answer is B, pascal second, equal to a newton second per square metre, which follows from Newton's law of viscosity, where the shearing stress in pascals is divided by the velocity gradient in reciprocal seconds.
Read the full explanation →Pascal's law is the principle behind which of the following devices?
Pascal's law says that pressure applied to an enclosed fluid is transmitted undiminished to every part of the fluid and to the walls of the vessel, so a modest push on the brake pedal creates a pressure in the brake fluid that is passed to the wider pistons at every…
Read the full explanation →A liquid rises upto a height greater than that for water in given capillary tube. Its reason may be that
In a capillary tube the height of rise is directly proportional to the surface tension of the liquid and inversely proportional to its density and the radius of the tube.
Read the full explanation →A fluid in which resistance to deformation is independent of the shear stress, is known as
In such a fluid the shearing stress is directly proportional to the rate of shear, so the coefficient of viscosity, which measures the resistance to deformation, keeps the same value whatever the stress applied; water, air, petrol and thin oils behave in this way.
Read the full explanation →Centre of buoyancy is
The upthrust on a body is the resultant of the pressure forces of the fluid around it, and that resultant acts through the centre of gravity of the fluid the body has pushed aside, which is why the point is called the centre of buoyancy.
Read the full explanation →What percent of the total volume of an iceberg floats above the water surface? Assume the density of ice to be 920 kg/m3 and the density of water to be 1000 kg/m3.
A floating body displaces its own weight of fluid, so the fraction of its volume that lies below the surface equals the ratio of its density to the density of the fluid, here 920 divided by 1000, which is 0.92.
Read the full explanation →On which of the following factors does the magnitude of the buoyant force acting on a body in a given fluid depend?
By Archimedes' principle the upthrust on a body equals the weight of the fluid it displaces, and that weight is the volume of the body actually immersed multiplied by the density of the fluid and by the acceleration due to gravity.
Read the full explanation →Where is the 24th National Maritime Search and Rescue Board Meeting being held?
The board meeting is convened by the Indian Coast Guard under the chairmanship of its Director General, Paramesh Sivamani, and takes up national preparedness for rescue at sea, the management of distress alerts and faster movement of rescue assets through technology and coordination between agencies.
Read the full explanation →How many international observers are attending SAREX-2026, and from how many countries?
The number of observers is slightly larger than the number of countries because some nations have sent more than one representative, and the Ministry of Defence treats this international presence as a highlight of the drill, since it points to shared rescue protocols and the ability of different navies and…
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