SSC 2022 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is B, Arikamedu. Arikamedu, on the Ariyankuppam river near Puducherry on the Coromandel coast, began as a small fishing settlement and grew into a busy port that traded with the Romans and the Greco Roman world in the first centuries of the common era. Excavations there have brought out Roman amphorae that carried wine and olive oil, red glazed Arretine ware, glass and stone beads, lamps and Roman coins, along with the local rouletted pottery, which is why the site is identified with the Poduke named in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. A is wrong because Badami in Karnataka was the inland capital of the Chalukyas, known for its rock cut cave temples. C is wrong because Lothal in Gujarat is a Harappan site with a dockyard, far older and on the western coast. D is wrong because tulapurushadana was a ritual of weighing oneself against gold and giving it away, not a place at all. Exam tip: Arikamedu near Puducherry is the Poduke of Roman trade; Lothal is the Harappan dock in Gujarat.

The correct answer is C, Germanium. Germanium is not used to build light emitting diodes because it is an indirect band gap semiconductor, so an electron falling back across the gap gives up most of its energy as heat in the crystal rather than as light. Its band gap is also very small, about 0.66 electron volt, which is far too little to produce visible light. Light emitting diodes are therefore made from direct band gap compounds, whose gap can be tuned to the colour wanted. A is wrong because gallium phosphide is used for green and yellow diodes. B is wrong because indium gallium nitride gives the blue and white diodes that made modern lighting possible and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014. D is wrong because gallium arsenide is the standard material for red and infrared diodes, including the ones inside television remote controls. Exam tip: light emitting diodes need direct band gap materials such as gallium arsenide, gallium phosphide and indium gallium nitride; silicon and germanium are indirect and do not emit light.

The correct answer is C, 1000. Salinity is the quantity of dissolved salt, in grams, present in one thousand grams of sea water, so it is read as parts per thousand. The average salinity of the oceans is about thirty five parts per thousand, which means about thirty five grams of salt in a kilogram of sea water. Sodium chloride makes up the largest share of it, followed by magnesium chloride, magnesium sulphate and calcium sulphate. Salinity rises where evaporation is high and the inflow of fresh water is low, which is why the Red Sea reaches about forty one parts per thousand, and it falls near the mouths of large rivers and in polar waters fed by melting ice. A, B and D are wrong because a base of ten thousand, a hundred or ten grams would not give the parts per thousand figure that oceanographers actually use. Exam tip: salinity is grams of salt per 1000 grams of sea water, and the ocean average is about 35 parts per thousand.

The correct answer is A, Sangama Dynasty. The Vijayanagara kingdom was founded in 1336 by two brothers, Harihara and Bukka, who belonged to the Sangama family, and the line is therefore called the Sangama dynasty. Their capital, Vijayanagara, stood on the south bank of the Tungabhadra near modern Hampi in Karnataka. Four dynasties ruled the kingdom one after another, the Sangama, the Saluva, the Tuluva and the Aravidu. D is wrong because the Tuluva dynasty came third and gave the kingdom its most famous ruler, Krishnadeva Raya, who reigned in the early sixteenth century, but it did not found the state. B and C are wrong because Nagama and Soma were never ruling houses of Vijayanagara. The kingdom’s long rivalry with the Bahmani sultanate ended badly at the battle of Talikota in 1565, when the combined Deccan sultanates defeated Rama Raya. Exam tip: Vijayanagara founded in 1336 by Harihara and Bukka of the Sangama dynasty; the order of dynasties is Sangama, Saluva, Tuluva, Aravidu.

The correct answer is C, SDG 6. Sustainable Development Goal 6 is clean water and sanitation, and its aim is to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. The seventeen goals were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and they took over from the Millennium Development Goals. Goal 6 covers safe drinking water, toilets and an end to open defecation, better treatment of waste water, efficient use of water in farming and industry, and the protection of rivers, lakes and groundwater. A is wrong because SDG 4 is quality education. B is wrong because SDG 7 is affordable and clean energy. D is wrong because SDG 5 is gender equality. Exam tip: SDG 4 education, SDG 5 gender equality, SDG 6 clean water and sanitation, SDG 7 clean energy; the seventeen goals were adopted in 2015 with 2030 as the target year.

The correct answer is D, Tundra. In Koppen’s classification the group of cold climates, marked E, holds two types, the tundra climate and the ice cap climate. The tundra belt lies mainly north of the Arctic Circle along the northern edges of North America, Europe and Asia. Its summers are short and cool, the average temperature of the warmest month stays below ten degrees Celsius, the subsoil stays frozen as permafrost, and the plant cover is limited to mosses, lichens and low shrubs, with no trees. A is wrong because the humid subtropical type belongs to the warm temperate group, which covers northern India, southern China and the south eastern United States. C is wrong because the humid continental type falls in the cold snow forest group, one step milder than the polar group. B is wrong because highland climate is kept as a separate group, where conditions change with altitude rather than with latitude. Exam tip: Koppen’s groups are A tropical, B dry, C warm temperate, D cold snow forest, E cold or polar and H highland.

The correct answer is A, Vijayawada. Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh has a large coal based thermal power station on the Krishna river, named after Dr Narla Tata Rao, but no nuclear plant. India’s nuclear stations are run by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, and the other three names in the question are all on that list. B is wrong because Narora, in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh on the bank of the Ganga, has a station with two pressurised heavy water reactors. C is wrong because Tarapur in Palghar district of Maharashtra is the country’s oldest nuclear station, commissioned in 1969 with boiling water reactors built with American help. D is wrong because Rawatbhata in Rajasthan stands on the Chambal near the Rana Pratap Sagar dam and carries the largest number of units of any Indian nuclear station. Kakrapar in Gujarat, Kaiga in Karnataka, and Kalpakkam and Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu complete the set. Exam tip: Tarapur was India’s first nuclear power station; Vijayawada is thermal, not nuclear.

The correct answer is D, basketball. Pivoting is the legal turn in which a player holding the ball keeps one foot fixed on the floor, the pivot foot, and steps around with the other foot; it lets a player face the basket or protect the ball without being called for travelling. Option A is wrong because hockey uses bully, short corner, penalty stroke, scoop and dribble. Option B is wrong because volleyball uses service, spike, block, dig and libero. Option C is wrong because badminton uses smash, drop shot, net shot, lob and deuce. Basketball also contributes dunk, rebound, free throw and hold ball to exam papers, and the game's other favourite fact is the ring height of 3.05 metres, so revise the two together. The pivot foot may be lifted to shoot or pass, but it must not return to the floor before the ball leaves the hand.

The correct answer is C, sheet erosion. In sheet erosion water spreads over a wide slope and carries away a thin, even film of topsoil, so nothing obvious is left behind to see, and the loss is noticed only years later as falling yields. That invisibility is what makes it the most dangerous form for farmers. Option A is wrong because gully erosion cuts visible channels down a slope, deep enough to stop a plough. Option B is wrong because a landslide is a sudden and highly visible mass movement of rock and soil down a hillside. Option D is wrong because ravines are gullies that have widened and deepened over a large area, producing the badland of the Chambal valley, which is visible even from the air. The order of visibility runs from sheet erosion at the least to landslides at the most.

The correct answer is B, because black soil is poor in phosphoric acid, nitrogen and organic matter, not rich in them. What it is rich in is calcium carbonate, magnesium, potash and lime, and remembering that short list is the safest way to answer any statement question on this soil. Option A is a correct statement, since black soil formed from the weathering of the lava of the Deccan trap and its main belt lies over Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh. Option C is a correct statement, because the fine clayey texture of the soil lets it hold moisture through the dry months, which is exactly why cotton grows on it without irrigation. Option D is a correct statement, because the soil shrinks in the heat and opens deep cracks that let air into the lower layers, giving it the name self-ploughing soil.

The correct answer is B, dienes. The prefix di stands for two and the ending ene for a carbon to carbon double bond, so a diene is a hydrocarbon carrying exactly two such bonds; buta-1,3-diene, the raw material of synthetic rubber, is the standard example. Option A is wrong because terpenes are a class of natural compounds built from isoprene units and found in the oils of plants; they may contain several double bonds but the name says nothing about the number. Option C is wrong because the ending yne refers to a triple bond, so a name of that kind would describe three triple bonds and not double bonds at all. Option D is wrong for the same reason: it would mean two triple bonds. Reading the prefix for the count and the ending for the kind of bond answers the whole family of such questions.

The correct answer is 1962-68. India's first National Emergency was proclaimed on 26 October 1962, during the war with China, on the ground of external aggression. It stayed in force long after the fighting ended and was revoked only on 10 January 1968, which is why the question gives the span 1962–68. President Dr S. Radhakrishnan made the proclamation, on the advice of Jawaharlal Nehru's government.

The other spans are invented, built around the right decade to catch candidates who remember only "the 1960s". For the full picture, learn all three proclamations together: 1962 (external aggression, the war with China), 1971 (external aggression, the war with Pakistan) and 1975 (internal disturbance, declared while the 1971 emergency was still in force). Both the 1971 and 1975 emergencies ended in March 1977. The long 1962–68 emergency, continuing years after the war, was itself one of the reasons later governments added limits on how long an emergency can last without fresh approval.

The correct answer is D, Industrial Disputes Act. The Industrial Disputes Act was passed in 1947 and governs how disputes between employers and workmen, including matters that concern trade unions as well as individual workmen, are raised and settled. It sets up works committees, conciliation officers, courts of enquiry, labour courts, industrial tribunals and a national tribunal, lays down when a strike or a lock-out is lawful, and requires larger establishments to take government permission before lay-off, retrenchment or closure. Its provisions have now been folded into the Industrial Relations Code, 2020. A is wrong because the Indian Councils Acts, of 1861, 1892 and 1909, dealt with legislative councils and not with labour. B is wrong because the Charter Acts, the last of them in 1853, renewed the East India Company's charter. C is wrong because the Rowlatt Act of 1919 allowed detention without trial and led to the protest at Jallianwala Bagh. Exam tip: Industrial Disputes Act 1947, now part of the Industrial Relations Code, 2020.

The correct answer is B, Nagpur Road Plan. The Nagpur Plan, drawn up at a conference of chief engineers of the provinces and states held at Nagpur in 1943, was the first attempt at planned road development in India and covered the twenty years from 1943 to 1963. It sorted roads into four classes, national highways, state highways, district roads and village roads, laid them out in a star and grid pattern, and set the target of about 16 kilometres of road for every 100 square kilometres of country. A is wrong because there is no Poona Road Plan among India's road development plans. C is wrong because the Bombay Plan, from 1961 to 1981, was the second twenty-year plan and aimed at roughly double that road length. D is wrong because the Lucknow Plan, from 1981 to 2001, was the third such plan, the first prepared after independence by Indian engineers alone, and it brought in the idea of expressways. Exam tip: Nagpur 1943-63 first, Bombay 1961-81 second, Lucknow 1981-2001 third.

The correct answer is D, Acoustics. Acoustics is the branch of physics that deals with how sound is produced, how it travels and how it is heard or absorbed. The word comes from a Greek root meaning to hear. Sound is a mechanical wave, so it needs a material medium and cannot pass through a vacuum; it travels at about 343 metres per second in air at room temperature and much faster in water and in steel. Acoustics is put to work in designing halls and studios so that echo and noise are controlled, and in sonar, ultrasound scanning and hearing aids. A is wrong because optics is the study of light, its reflection, refraction and the working of lenses and mirrors. B is wrong because photonics deals with the making, control and detection of photons, as in lasers and optical fibres. C is wrong because astrophysics studies the physics of stars, galaxies and the universe. Exam tip: acoustics – sound; optics – light; photonics – photons; seismology – earthquake waves.

The correct answer is C, neonatal mortality rate. The neonatal period is the first 28 completed days after birth, and the neonatal mortality rate counts the deaths in that period for every 1,000 live births in a year. It is watched closely because most of these deaths come from a few causes that good care can prevent, such as birth asphyxia, low birth weight, early infection and preterm birth. Within it, deaths in the first seven days are counted separately as early neonatal deaths. A is wrong because the infant mortality rate covers deaths of children below one year of age per 1,000 live births, a wider group. B is wrong because the crude death rate counts all deaths in a year per 1,000 of the whole population, without regard to age. D is wrong because an age-specific mortality rate counts deaths in one chosen age group per 1,000 people of that group. Exam tip: neonatal – within 28 days; infant – within one year; under-five – within five years, all per 1,000 live births.

The correct answer is B, Drosera. Drosera, known as the sundew, is an insect-eating plant whose leaves are covered with stalked glands tipped with a shining drop of sticky fluid. An insect that lands on it is held fast, the tentacles curl over the catch, and enzymes digest the soft parts so that the plant can absorb nitrogen. Carnivorous plants grow in marshy or sandy soils that are poor in nitrogen, and they still make their own food by photosynthesis; the insect only makes up for the missing mineral. The pitcher plant Nepenthes, the bladderwort Utricularia and the Venus flytrap trap their prey in the same way but with different leaf traps. A is wrong because Clarkia is an ordinary garden flower of the evening primrose family. C is wrong because Alyssum is a small ornamental plant of the mustard family. D is wrong because hollyhock is a tall garden plant of the mallow family. Exam tip: insect-eating plants – Drosera (sundew), Nepenthes (pitcher plant), Utricularia, Venus flytrap; they need nitrogen, not food.

The correct answer is A, Jharkhand. In the Census of 2011 Jharkhand recorded a density of about 414 persons per square kilometre, the highest among the four states named. Density of population means the number of persons living on one square kilometre of land, and it is found by dividing the population of an area by its area. For India as a whole the figure was 382 persons per square kilometre in 2011. Among the states Bihar stood first with about 1,106 persons and Arunachal Pradesh last with only 17, while among all units the National Capital Territory of Delhi was the most crowded. B is wrong because Goa had about 394 persons per square kilometre, a little below Jharkhand. C is wrong because Gujarat had about 308. D is wrong because Maharashtra had about 365, in spite of its large cities, since it is a very large state by area. Exam tip: Census 2011 density – India 382, Bihar highest state, Arunachal Pradesh lowest, Delhi highest among all units.

The correct answer is C, Kakrapar. The Kakrapar Atomic Power Station stands in Surat district of Gujarat, on the bank of the Tapi, and is run by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India. It uses pressurised heavy water reactors, and its third unit is the first 700 MWe reactor of Indian design to be built, a bigger version of the 220 MWe units used earlier. India's other nuclear stations include Tarapur in Maharashtra, the oldest, Rawatbhata in Rajasthan, Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu, Narora in Uttar Pradesh, Kaiga in Karnataka and Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu. A is wrong because Hirakud, on the Mahanadi in Odisha, is a large dam with a hydroelectric station, not an atomic one. B is wrong because Naharkatiya in Assam is an oilfield. D is wrong because Tatipaka in Andhra Pradesh has a small oil refinery. Exam tip: Kakrapar – Gujarat, on the Tapi, home of India's first 700 MWe indigenous reactor.

The correct answer is A, 297. The Constitution (Fortieth Amendment) Act, 1976 rewrote Article 297 so that all lands, minerals and other things of value lying in the territorial waters, the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone of India vest in the Union and are held for the purposes of the Union. The same amendment empowered Parliament to fix the limits of these maritime zones from time to time, and it also added a large number of state land-ceiling laws to the Ninth Schedule to protect them from court challenge. B is wrong because Article 248 deals with the residuary powers of legislation, which rest with Parliament. C is wrong because Article 245 sets out the extent of the laws made by Parliament and by State legislatures. D is wrong because Article 226 gives every High Court the power to issue writs. Exam tip: Article 297 – things of value in the territorial waters and the exclusive economic zone vest in the Union; widened by the 40th Amendment, 1976.