Science & Technology Mixed Quiz: Set 26

The correct answer is C, 916. Fineness is the carat value divided by 24 and multiplied by one thousand, so 22 divided by 24 gives 0.916 and the article is marked 22K916, meaning 91.6 per cent gold. This is the usual grade for Indian jewellery because pure gold is too soft to hold a setting. Option A is wrong because 750 is the mark for 18 carat gold, which is 75 per cent gold. Option B is wrong because 833 corresponds to 20 carat gold, at 83.3 per cent. Option D is wrong because 999 is the mark for 24 carat, that is pure gold, which is sold as coins and bars rather than jewellery. Learn the ladder 999, 958, 916, 833, 750 and 585 against 24, 23, 22, 20, 18 and 14 carat, because papers ask it in either direction.

The correct answer is B, the Bureau of Indian Standards. The Bureau is India’s National Standards Body and it grants the ISI mark to manufactured goods that conform to the relevant Indian Standard. The initials ISI survive from the Indian Standards Institution of 1947, whose work the Bureau took over when it came into being on 1 April 1987, which is why the mark and the body have different names. Option A is wrong because the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India deals with food, where the mark is a fourteen-digit licence number and the vegetarian or non-vegetarian symbol, not an ISI mark. Option C is wrong because the Directorate of Marketing and Inspection administers Agmark for agricultural produce. Option D is wrong because the Bureau of Energy Efficiency gives the star rating that shows how much electricity an appliance uses.

The correct answer is C, computer numerical control milling. Milling on a computer-controlled machine is a subtractive process: a rotating cutter removes material from a solid block until the shape remains, so no layers are added. Option A is wrong because fused deposition modelling is an additive process in which a heated nozzle extrudes a thermoplastic filament layer by layer. Option B is wrong because selective laser sintering is additive too, fusing grains of polymer powder together with a laser where the object is to be solid. Option D is wrong because stereolithography, the oldest of the three, is additive: a laser cures liquid resin point by point. Slipping a machining process in among printing processes is the standard way this question is set. It is worth noting that additive and subtractive methods are often combined in practice, a printed part being finished on a milling machine to get an accurate surface.

The correct answer is B, additive manufacturing. The name comes from the method: material is added layer upon layer under the control of a digital model until the object is complete, so that nothing has to be cut away. Option A is wrong because subtractive manufacturing is the exact opposite, in which a solid block is cut, drilled, turned or milled until the required shape is left, as on a lathe. Option C is wrong because formative manufacturing refers to shaping a material by applying force without adding or removing it, such as forging, casting or injection moulding. Option D is wrong because reductive manufacturing is not a recognised term in the field; it is offered only because it sounds like the opposite of additive and so tempts a candidate who has learnt the contrast but not the names.

The correct answer is A, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The Authority was created by the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, was established in 2008 and works under that Ministry with its headquarters at New Delhi, because food safety is treated as a public health matter. Option B is wrong because the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare runs Agmark grading through the Directorate of Marketing and Inspection, which concerns the grade of produce, not its safety. Option C is wrong because the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution handles the Bureau of Indian Standards and the public distribution system. Option D is wrong because the Ministry of Food Processing Industries promotes the processing industry through schemes and parks, and the regulator remains the Authority under the Health Ministry.

The correct answer is B, the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology at Nainital that grew out of the old Uttar Pradesh State Observatory. The telescope was built in collaboration with Belgium and activated in 2016 on the Devasthal ridge at about 2,450 metres, and the same site carries a 1.3 metre fast optical telescope and the four metre liquid mirror telescope. A runs Kavalur, Hanle and Kodaikanal, not Devasthal. C of Ahmedabad runs the Udaipur Solar Observatory and the infrared telescopes on Mount Abu. D at Bengaluru runs the radioheliograph at Gauribidanur, so each option names a real institute with a different set of telescopes. The same institute ran the older telescopes at Manora Peak in Nainital before the Devasthal ridge was developed.

The correct answer is B, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The novel, published in 1992, uses the word metaverse for a shared virtual city that people enter through goggles and move about in as avatars, and the term was taken up decades later for persistent three-dimensional online worlds. Option A is wrong because Neuromancer, published in 1984, gave the world the related term cyberspace, not metaverse. Option C is wrong because Ready Player One, a later novel, describes such a world but did not name it; it borrows from the idea rather than coining it. Option D is wrong because the Sword of Damocles is not a book at all but the nickname of the head-mounted display Ivan Sutherland built in 1968, the first of its kind.

The correct answer is B, India's first indigenously built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. INS Arihant was built under the Advanced Technology Vessel programme and commissioned in 2016; because it carries ballistic missiles, the K-15 Sagarika among them, it completed India's nuclear triad, that is the ability to launch a nuclear weapon from land, from the air and from the sea. Option A is wrong because the first indigenous aircraft carrier is the new INS Vikrant of 2022. Option C is wrong because the Navy's first submarine was the original INS Kalvari of 1967, of Soviet Foxtrot design. Option D is wrong because India's first guided missile destroyers belong to the Rajput and later the Delhi class. A nuclear submarine that hunts other ships is an attack submarine, which is a different role from Arihant's.

The correct answer is B, an earthen pitcher. The Eco Mark scheme was notified in 1991 for consumer products that cause the least harm to the environment over their life, and the earthen pitcher was chosen as the symbol because it is made from a renewable material, is produced without generating waste, uses little energy and is wholly biodegradable when broken. The criteria for each product category are framed with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and the mark itself is awarded by the Bureau of Indian Standards along with the ISI mark. Options A, C and D are wrong because no such symbol was adopted for the scheme; a leaf, a river and a peacock feather are generic images of nature used in various logos, and candidates pick them by guesswork. The pitcher is the single fact to remember here.

The correct answer is C, Section 70B. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team functions under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and is designated by section 70B as the national agency for collecting and analysing information on cyber incidents, issuing advisories and coordinating responses. Option A is wrong; section 69 gives the power to intercept, monitor or decrypt information in specified circumstances. Option B is the hardest distractor because section 70A designates the nodal agency for critical information infrastructure, which is the NCIIPC, a different body working under the National Technical Research Organisation. Option D is wrong since section 79 is the safe harbour provision that limits an intermediary's liability for content uploaded by third parties. Keep 70A with NCIIPC and 70B with CERT-In.

The correct answer is C, Jaron Lanier. He popularised the phrase virtual reality in the late 1980s while building and selling some of the first commercial headsets and data gloves, and the name has stuck to the technology ever since. Option A is wrong because Morton Heilig built the Sensorama in 1962, an early immersive machine that showed film with sound, vibration and smell, but he described his work in other words. Option B is wrong because Thomas Caudell coined the different term augmented reality around 1990, while working on a system to guide aircraft assembly workers. Option D is wrong because S. Scott Crump devised fused deposition modelling, a 3D printing process, and has no connection with the reality technologies at all. Keeping these four names apart is the whole of the question, because each belongs to a different strand of the same syllabus unit.

The correct answer is B, Vikram Sarabhai. He founded the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad in 1947, convinced the government to set up the Indian National Committee for Space Research in 1962, picked Thumba near the magnetic equator for the first sounding rocket launch in November 1963, and led the organisation that became the Indian Space Research Organisation in 1969; the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram is named after him. Option A is wrong; Homi Bhabha is the father of the Indian nuclear programme, and swapping the two men is the commonest error in this chapter, though Bhabha did support the early space work. Option C is wrong; A. P. J. Abdul Kalam is the Missile Man, who directed the Satellite Launch Vehicle and the guided missile programme. Option D is wrong; Satish Dhawan headed ISRO from 1972 and the launch centre at Sriharikota is named after him, but he did not found the programme.

The correct answer is A, the Central Silk Board. The Silk Mark is issued by the Silk Mark Organisation of India, launched in 2004, which is a society set up by the Central Silk Board under the Ministry of Textiles; the Board itself was constituted in 1949 and has its headquarters at Bengaluru. The mark is a swing tag or label assuring the buyer that the fabric is pure natural silk and not a blend or an artificial imitation. Option B is wrong because the Bureau of Indian Standards issues the ISI mark, the hallmark and the Eco Mark but not the Silk Mark. Option C is wrong because the Textiles Committee tests and inspects textiles for export quality, a separate function. Option D is wrong because the Khadi and Village Industries Commission certifies khadi and village industry products, which is a different mark altogether.

The correct answer is B, unmanned aerial vehicle. A UAV is an aircraft with no pilot on board, flown either by a remote pilot or by its own programme, and when it is counted together with its ground control station and the radio link between them the whole is called an unmanned aircraft system. Option A is wrong because universal air vehicle is not a term used in aviation. Option C is wrong because avionics is the name for the electronic systems of an aircraft, and no vehicle class is named after it. Option D is wrong because upper atmosphere vehicle is not a standard expression either, though high altitude pseudo satellites do fly in the stratosphere. For the exam, pair UAV with drone and UAS with the whole system.

The correct answer is B, it overlays computer-generated content on the user's view of the real world. In augmented reality the room, street or object in front of the user stays visible and images, text or sound are added on top of it, as when a camera labels a monument or a windscreen display shows directions. Option A is wrong because shutting out the real world and replacing it entirely is the definition of virtual reality, and attributing that full immersion to augmented reality is the commonest error in this topic. Option C is wrong because building objects layer by layer describes additive manufacturing. Option D is wrong because a virtual copy fed by live sensor data is a digital twin, a related idea in the same syllabus but a distinct one.

The correct answer is C, the Department of Space. The Department of Space, created in 1972, and the Department of Atomic Energy, created in 1954, are not placed under the Ministry of Science and Technology; both report directly to the Prime Minister, which is why ISRO and the atomic energy establishment are described as working under the Prime Minister's charge. Option A is wrong as an answer because the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, created in 1985, is indeed one of the three departments of the Ministry of Science and Technology and oversees CSIR and the National Research Development Corporation. Option B is wrong because the Department of Biotechnology, created in 1986, is the third department of the same ministry and runs BIRAC. Option D is wrong because the Department of Science and Technology of 1971 is the first and best known of the three.

The correct answer is B, the Energy Conservation Act, 2001. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency was set up on 1 March 2002 under that Act and works under the Ministry of Power; its Standards and Labelling programme gives appliances a rating from one star to five stars, where more stars mean less electricity consumed for the same service. Option A is wrong because the Electricity Act, 2003 governs generation, transmission, distribution and trading of electricity and created the regulatory commissions. Option C is wrong because the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 is the umbrella environmental law under which pollution standards and the Eco Mark criteria are notified. Option D is wrong because the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016 governs the standards body that gives the ISI mark and the hallmark, a different Bureau with a different Ministry.

The correct answer is A, Extended Reality. XR is the collective name for augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality together, and is used whenever a statement is meant to cover all the technologies that blend the physical world with digital content. Option B is wrong because extreme rendering is not a term of art; rendering is simply the process of generating an image from a model. Option C is wrong because external representation belongs to the vocabulary of cognitive science and data modelling, not to this field. Option D is wrong because expanded resolution describes the sharpness of a display and has nothing to do with the category of technology. A question asking which term includes the other three is always asking for XR.

The correct answer is B, 14 October. World Standards Day is observed on 14 October to mark the day in 1946 on which delegates from twenty-five countries met in London and agreed to create an international standards organisation, which became the International Organization for Standardization, founded in 1947 with its headquarters at Geneva. Option A is wrong because 15 March is World Consumer Rights Day. Option C is wrong because 24 December is National Consumer Rights Day in India, the day on which the Consumer Protection Act of 1986 received the President’s assent. Option D is wrong because 1 April is the date on which the Bureau of Indian Standards came into being in 1987, a fact worth knowing but not an observance day. These four dates are often mixed in a single matching question, so learn them as a set.

The correct answer is B, Bengaluru. The country's first 3D-printed post office was built at Cambridge Layout in Bengaluru and opened in 2023, its walls laid down by a concrete printing robot working from a digital design, with technical guidance from an Indian Institute of Technology. Option A is wrong because Chennai is home to the institute that advised on the project but not to the building itself, which is the trap in the question. Option C is wrong because Hyderabad is in the state where India's first 3D-printed temple was built, at Siddipet in Telangana, a different milestone of the same year. Option D is wrong because Pune has no such post office, although it is a centre of manufacturing research in general. The project is also remembered as the first building of the Department of Posts to be raised by a printing robot rather than by masonry.