SSC GK Questions 2026

The Sun is overhead, with its rays vertical at noon, only at places between the Tropic of Cancer (23.5 degrees N) and the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5 degrees S).

The Coriolis force is the apparent force caused by the rotation of the Earth that deflects moving air and water to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere.

Western disturbances are low-pressure systems that originate over the Mediterranean Sea and travel eastward with the subtropical westerly jet stream in winter, bringing light rain to Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, and snow to the Himalaya, between December and February.

Precipitation is any form of water, liquid or solid, that falls from clouds to the ground. When the temperature is above freezing it falls as rain or drizzle; below freezing, water vapour turns directly into ice crystals that fall as snow.

The Beas rises at Beas Kund near the Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh, flows past Manali, Kullu and Mandi, enters Punjab and meets the Satluj at Harike in Punjab, where the Harike barrage and wetland stand.

At its Lahore session in December 1929, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian National Congress passed the Purna Swaraj resolution declaring complete independence, not dominion status, as its goal.

The Indo-Greek kings who ruled the north-west of India from about the second century BCE were the first in Indian history to issue coins that carried the name and portrait of the ruler, with Greek legends on one side and Prakrit in the Kharoshthi script on the other.

Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General of Bengal under the Regulating Act of 1773 and held office from 1773 to 1785.

The Prayag Prashasti, also called the Allahabad Pillar Inscription, is a Sanskrit eulogy of the Gupta emperor Samudragupta (about 335 to 375 CE) composed by his court poet and minister Harishena, who held the titles sandhivigrahika (minister of peace and war) and kumaramatya.

Buddhist texts list sixteen mahajanapadas of the sixth century BCE, and Gandhara, in the north-west covering the Peshawar and Rawalpindi region, had its capital at Taxila (Takshashila), near present-day Islamabad in Pakistan.

Starlight has to cross many layers of air before it reaches the eye, and these layers keep changing in temperature and density, so their refractive index keeps changing too.

Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope in 1668. In it, light from the star falls on a large concave mirror at the bottom of the tube, and a small flat mirror set at 45 degrees near the top turns the light sideways to the eyepiece.

Levers are grouped by where the fulcrum, the load and the effort sit. In a second class lever the load lies between the fulcrum and the effort.

Each human kidney has about one million nephrons, and every nephron begins with a cup-shaped Bowman's capsule that encloses a knot of capillaries called the glomerulus.

Vitamin D helps the intestine absorb calcium and phosphorus, so without it the bones of a growing child stay soft and bend, giving bow legs, a pigeon chest and a large forehead; this disease is rickets.

LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in the USA, detected gravitational waves for the first time in September 2015 (announced in February 2016), and such waves were predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1916.

Milk of magnesia is a white suspension of magnesium hydroxide, Mg(OH)2, in water, and its milky look gives it the name.

Galvanisation is the coating of iron or steel with a thin layer of zinc so that the iron underneath does not rust.

The name of a rowing event tells you both the size of the crew and the way the oars are held: sculling means each rower works a pair of oars, and double means the boat carries two of them.

What the Prime Minister called noteworthy was not the single silver alone but the run behind it: medals at three Asian Games one after another, a record of turning up at the top of the sport over many years rather than in one good season.