State Exams 2014 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is A, Horizontal equal halves. The equator is the latitude of 0 degrees and it runs east to west round the middle of the earth, cutting the globe into two equal halves. These halves are the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere, and each stretches through 90 degrees of latitude up to its pole. The equator is the longest parallel, about 40,075 km round the earth, and every other parallel is shorter than it. Day and night stay nearly equal through the year on the equator, and the sun is overhead there on the two equinoxes, 21 March and 23 September. B is wrong because the equator is not drawn at a slant; it lies at right angles to the earth's axis. C is wrong because the two parts it makes are equal, not unequal. D is wrong because the vertical division is made by the Prime Meridian, which marks off the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Exam tip: the equator divides north from south, the Prime Meridian divides east from west.

The correct answer is A, By microphone. A microphone is a transducer: sound waves strike a thin diaphragm, the diaphragm vibrates, and that mechanical vibration is turned into a varying electric signal. In a moving-coil microphone the diaphragm carries a small coil that moves in the field of a permanent magnet, so the changing magnetic flux induces a current by electromagnetic induction; a condenser microphone instead works by changing the capacitance between two plates. Either way the output is an electrical signal that can be amplified, recorded or transmitted. Option B is wrong because a loudspeaker does the opposite, converting an electrical signal back into sound. Option C is wrong because a sonometer is a wire-and-box apparatus used to study the frequency and the laws of vibrating strings; it converts nothing. Option D is wrong because an earphone, like a loudspeaker, turns electrical energy into sound energy. Exam tip: microphone converts sound to electrical energy, while loudspeaker and earphone convert electrical energy to sound.

The correct answer is C, Red color scatters less than other colors. At sunset the Sun is close to the horizon, so its light travels through a much thicker layer of atmosphere before it reaches the eye. Air molecules scatter short wavelengths, blue and violet, far more strongly than long ones; this is Rayleigh scattering, in which the scattering falls off as the fourth power of the wavelength. Over that long slanting path almost all the blue is scattered sideways out of the beam, and mostly the long-wavelength red and orange light survives to reach us, so the Sun and the sky around it look red. Option A is wrong because sunlight is white and contains all seven colours. Option B is wrong because red is scattered the least, not the most; blue is scattered most, which is why the midday sky is blue. Option D is wrong because the effect lies in the atmosphere, not in the sensitivity of the eye. Exam tip: Rayleigh scattering gives a blue sky at noon and a red Sun at sunrise and sunset.

The correct answer is D, Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya. Mahbub-i-Ilahi means the beloved of God, and it is the title by which this Chishti master of Delhi has been known for seven centuries. He kept his distance from the Sultans, refused their grants, and his hospice at Ghiyaspur became the most visited centre of the order; Amir Khusrau was his best-known disciple. Option A, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, brought the Chishti order to India and settled at Ajmer, where he is remembered as Gharib Nawaz, the helper of the poor. Option B, Baba Fariduddin Ganjshakar, taught at Ajodhan in Punjab, wrote in the local language, and a number of his verses were later included in the Sikh scripture. Option C, Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, was the successor of Moinuddin Chishti at Delhi and the master of Baba Farid, so the four names form a single line of succession.

The correct answer is D, 50097. Hexadecimal is base sixteen, so the four places of C3B1 carry the weights 4096, 256, 16 and 1 from left to right, and the letters stand for numbers: A is 10, B is 11, C is 12, D is 13, E is 14 and F is 15. Putting the digits in place gives 12 into 4096, which is 49152, plus 3 into 256, which is 768, plus 11 into 16, which is 176, plus 1, and the four terms add up to 50097. Options A and B are far too small, because any four-digit hexadecimal number beginning with C is at least 12 into 4096, that is 49152, so 12197 and 32097 cannot be right. Option C lies in the right range but would need the second digit to be about 11, not 3, since 52097 minus 49152 is 2945, which is about 11 sixteens of 256. Exam tip: fix the weights 4096, 256, 16 and 1 in mind, and remember A to F mean 10 to 15.