State Exams GK Questions 2026

Bara Shigri descends from the Pir Panjal and Great Himalayan slopes into the valley of the Chandra river, which joins the Bhaga at Tandi to form the Chandrabhaga or Chenab.

The Zemu glacier lies in North Sikkim at the eastern base of Kangchenjunga, the highest peak in India, and its meltwater reaches the Teesta river.

A glacier fills the whole floor of a valley and erodes its sides as well as its bed, so it widens and deepens the valley into a trough with a broad flat floor and steep straight walls, which in section looks like the letter U. Option A is wrong because…

A drumlin is a smooth oval mound of till, the unsorted debris left by ice, shaped like an inverted spoon with its steeper end facing the direction from which the glacier came; a group of drumlins produces what is called basket-of-eggs topography.

A cirque, also called a corrie, is the armchair-shaped hollow that a glacier scoops at the head of its valley by plucking and abrasion; when the ice melts, water collects in the rock basin and the small round lake so formed is a tarn.

The Pamir knot is the node where the Himalaya, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, the Kunlun and the Tian Shan ranges meet, and the Fedchenko glacier, running for roughly seventy-seven kilometres, is the longest glacier found anywhere outside the Arctic and the Antarctic.

Antarctica holds the greater part of the ice of the earth, so its outlet glaciers dwarf those of other continents.

The Gangotri glacier ends in a snout shaped like the mouth of a cow, which gives it the name Gaumukh, and the stream that issues from it is the Bhagirathi.

Its meltwater feeds the Nubra river, a tributary of the Shyok, which joins the Indus.

Cobalt-60 is an artificial radioisotope that emits penetrating gamma rays and has a half-life of about 5.27 years, which makes it a convenient and long-lasting source for irradiation plants.

Iodine forms a deep blue-black complex with the long coiled chains of amylose in starch, and this colour change is the standard classroom and field test for starch.

Codex Alimentarius is Latin for food code, and the Commission of that name draws up model standards, codes of practice, and limits for additives, contaminants and pesticide residues, which member countries use when writing their own food law and which serve as the reference in international food trade.

That Act consolidated several scattered food laws, the most important of them the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act of 1954, into a single statute and created one authority to lay down science-based standards for food, regulate its manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import, and licence food businesses; its headquarters is…

Lumps of calcium carbide hidden in a crate of mangoes react with the moisture in the air and release acetylene gas, which forces the fruit to colour quickly, though the pulp inside stays unripe and tasteless.

Indian food standards divide preservatives into two classes. Class I preservatives are the natural ones that cooks have always used, and no limit is placed on the quantity: common salt, sugar, dextrose, spices, vinegar or acetic acid, honey and edible vegetable oils.

In lyophilisation the material is first frozen and then placed under a strong vacuum, so that the ice changes directly into vapour without passing through the liquid state.

Pasteurisation is not sterilisation: it is a mild heating that kills disease-causing organisms such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Salmonella and Brucella and most spoilage bacteria, while leaving the taste and nutritive value of milk largely unchanged.

Khesari dal, botanically Lathyrus sativus and also called grass pea, is a hardy pulse that survives drought and is therefore sometimes mixed with arhar dal or besan.

Argemone mexicana, the prickly poppy known in India as satyanashi, has seeds that look very like mustard seeds, so its oil is a classic adulterant of mustard oil.

A harvested fruit is still a living tissue that keeps respiring, using up its own sugars and acids and giving off heat, carbon dioxide and ethylene.