State Exams GK Questions 2026

At Devprayag in Uttarakhand the Bhagirathi, which comes down from the Gangotri glacier, meets the Alaknanda, and the united stream is called the Ganga from that point.

Hirakud dam stands on the Mahanadi in the Sambalpur district of Odisha and is among the longest earthen dams in the world, built for flood control, irrigation and power in a basin that used to flood badly.

The Narmada flows west from the Amarkantak plateau through the rift valley between the Vindhya and Satpura ranges and empties into the Gulf of Khambhat through an estuary, because the steep, narrow valley lets it carry its silt straight out to sea instead of spreading it.

The Godavari rises in the Western Ghats at Trimbakeshwar in the Nashik district of Maharashtra and flows east across the peninsula to the Bay of Bengal, draining the second largest basin in India after the Ganga.

The Godavari is about 1,465 kilometres long, rises at Trimbakeshwar near Nashik in Maharashtra, crosses Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh and falls into the Bay of Bengal, all within India, which makes it the longest river flowing wholly inside the country.

The Musi rises in the Anantagiri hills of Telangana, flows through Hyderabad, and joins the Krishna in Nalgonda district, which is why the city's water supply and floods are tied to it.

In the Rigveda the Ravi appears as the Parushni, and it is on this river that the Battle of the Ten Kings, the Dasarajna, is placed.

The Sutlej rises from the Rakas lake near Mansarovar in Tibet, where it is called the Langchen Khambab, and enters India through the Shipki La pass in Himachal Pradesh before flowing on to join the Beas at Harike.

The Tons is a tributary of the Yamuna in the Ganga system, rising in the Garhwal Himalaya, and has nothing to do with the Brahmaputra basin.

Bleaching powder, calcium oxychloride, is made in industry by passing chlorine gas over dry slaked lime, that is calcium hydroxide.

Tooth enamel is made of calcium phosphate, the hardest substance in the body, and it begins to corrode when the pH in the mouth drops below about 5.5.

A salt takes its character from the strength of the acid and the base that formed it. Ammonium chloride comes from hydrochloric acid, a strong acid, and ammonium hydroxide, a weak base, so the strong partner dominates and the solution has a pH below seven.

The stomach wall secretes hydrochloric acid, which makes the gastric juice strongly acidic, helps the enzyme pepsin digest proteins and kills many germs swallowed with food.

Plaster of Paris is calcium sulphate hemihydrate, made by heating gypsum, which is calcium sulphate dihydrate, to about 373 kelvin so that it loses three fourths of its water of crystallisation.

The sting of an ant and the hairs of the nettle plant inject formic acid, also called methanoic acid, which is why the skin burns; rubbing on a mild base such as baking soda or the leaf of the dock plant relieves it by neutralising the acid.

Baking soda is sodium hydrogen carbonate, a mild, non corrosive base used as an antacid, as an ingredient of baking powder along with a mild edible acid such as tartaric acid, and in soda acid fire extinguishers, where it releases carbon dioxide.

Borax, sodium tetraborate, is the salt of a strong base, sodium hydroxide, and a weak acid, boric acid, so its solution in water is basic.

The pH is the negative logarithm of the hydrogen ion concentration, so each rise of one unit means the concentration has fallen to one tenth.

Citrus fruits such as orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit owe their sharp sour taste to citric acid, which is the acid textbooks name for this family and the one examiners expect here.

Hydrofluorocarbons were adopted as substitutes for chlorofluorocarbons in refrigeration and air conditioning because they do not harm the ozone layer, but they turned out to be very powerful greenhouse gases, so the Kigali Amendment of 2016 brought them under the Montreal Protocol with a schedule for reducing their use.