Geography GK Questions with Answers – Page 81

Named after the Croatian seismologist who noticed that earthquake waves suddenly speed up at a certain depth, it marks the base of the crust and the top of the mantle, and is commonly shortened to the Moho.

The meridian of 82 degrees 30 minutes east passes near this town, and its local time is kept as Indian Standard Time across the whole country.

Every meridian runs from the North Pole to the South Pole, so all meridians are semicircles of the same length and all of them converge at the two poles.

Indian Standard Time is the local time of 82 degrees 30 minutes east. Multiplying 82.5 degrees by four minutes gives 330 minutes, that is five hours and thirty minutes, and since India lies east of Greenwich its clock is ahead by that much.

The circumference of the earth along a meridian is close to 40,000 kilometres, and dividing that by 360 degrees gives roughly 111 kilometres for one degree of latitude.

There are 90 parallels in the northern hemisphere, 90 in the southern hemisphere and the equator itself, which belongs to neither, making 181 in all.

The line does not follow it exactly: it bends east and west to keep the eastern tip of Siberia, the Aleutian Islands and several Pacific island groups on one side, so that no country is left with two dates at the same moment.

The Arctic Circle marks the latitude beyond which the sun stays above the horizon for the whole of at least one day in midsummer and below it for the whole of at least one day in midwinter, the phenomenon known as the midnight sun and the polar night.

The meridian running through it was accepted as the zero meridian, from which all longitudes are counted east and west, and its local time is Greenwich Mean Time, the reference for the world's standard times.

A great circle is one whose plane passes through the centre of the sphere and which therefore divides it into two equal halves.

The Tropic of Cancer passes through eight states, namely Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tripura and Mizoram.

The earth completes one rotation of 360 degrees in 24 hours, that is 1,440 minutes, and dividing 1,440 by 360 gives four minutes for every degree of longitude.

This meridian passes near Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh and runs roughly through the middle of the country, so it was adopted as the standard meridian of India.

Puducherry is the only Union Territory spread over both coasts of India. Puducherry and Karaikal lie on the east coast within Tamil Nadu, Yanam lies on the east coast in Andhra Pradesh, and Mahe lies on the west (Malabar) coast within Kerala.

The Narmada divides the Peninsular plateau into two parts: the Central Highlands to its north and the Deccan Plateau to its south.

Granite forms when magma cools slowly deep inside the Earth's crust, so it is an intrusive or plutonic igneous rock.

The Himalayas, about 2,400 km long, are divided from west to east into regions marked by river valleys, and the Nepal Himalayas lie between the Kali in the west and the Teesta in the east.

The Hindan rises in the Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, flows south past Ghaziabad and joins the Yamuna near Greater Noida, on its left bank.

A khadin is a long earthen embankment built across the lower end of a sloping field, so that rainwater running off the higher rocky ground collects behind it.

The Rapti rises in Nepal, flows past Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and joins the Ghaghra, which then meets the Ganga.