Uttar Pradesh 2015 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is A, Cache Memory. Cache is a small quantity of very fast static RAM placed between the processor and main memory to hold the instructions and data most likely to be needed next, and of the options given it has the shortest access time; only the registers inside the processor itself are faster. Cache is graded as L1, L2 and L3, with L1 nearest the core and quickest. D is wrong because random access memory is the main memory and is slower than cache, which is the whole reason cache exists. B is wrong because magnetic bubble memory is an old non-volatile technology that stored data as tiny magnetised regions in a thin film and was far slower than semiconductor memory. C is wrong because magnetic core memory, built from tiny ferrite rings, was the main memory of second generation computers and had access times measured in microseconds rather than nanoseconds.

The correct answer is D, film. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was instituted in 1969 for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema and is named after Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, who made the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913 and is called the father of Indian cinema; the first recipient was the actress Devika Rani. Option A is wrong because the highest sporting honours are the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award and the Arjuna Award, which cover cricket along with other games. Option B is wrong because hockey is honoured through the same sports awards, and Major Dhyan Chand's name is attached to them. Option C is wrong for the same reason. Note also that the award is presented with the National Film Awards. Phalke's own films, made between 1913 and the coming of sound, were silent, so the award honours a body of work rather than a single film.

The correct answer is C, Machilipatnam. Machilipatnam, also written as Masulipatnam, was the first Dutch factory in India, opened in 1605, and the English and the French also traded there; it was never a Portuguese possession. Option A, Bombay, was Portuguese until 1661, when it was given to Charles II of England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza and passed to the East India Company in 1668. Option B, Hooghly, was a Portuguese settlement in Bengal from the sixteenth century until Shah Jahan expelled them in 1632 for piracy and slave trading. Option D, Chaul, on the Konkan coast south of Bombay, was one of the early Portuguese ports and the site of a famous naval battle with the Egyptian fleet in 1508. Reading a settlement as Dutch when it is on the Coromandel coast is a reliable short cut in such questions.

The correct answer is C, Mrs. Sucheta Kripalani. Sucheta Kripalani became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh on 2 October 1963 and held the office till 1967, which made her the first woman to head any state government in India. She had taken part in the Quit India Movement, sang Vande Mataram in the Constituent Assembly on the eve of independence, and was a member of the sub-committee that worked on the Constitution. She was married to the Congress leader Acharya J. B. Kripalani. Option A is wrong because Justice M. Fathima Beevi was the first woman judge of the Supreme Court, in 1989. Option B is wrong because Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was the first woman President of the United Nations General Assembly and a governor, not a chief minister. Option D is wrong because Durba Banerjee was India’s first woman commercial pilot. Exam tip: Sucheta Kripalani first woman CM, Uttar Pradesh, 1963; Pratibha Patil first woman President, 2007.

The correct answer is C, 1024 kilobyte. Computer memory is counted in powers of two because a binary machine addresses memory in twos, so each step up the ladder is 1024 of the unit below it, not 1000. One byte is 8 bits, 1024 bytes make a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes make a megabyte, 1024 megabytes make a gigabyte and 1024 gigabytes make a terabyte, which is then followed by the petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte and yottabyte. So a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes, or 1048576 bytes. Option A is wrong because 1024 gigabytes make a terabyte, a unit far larger than a megabyte. Option B is wrong because 1000 bytes is roughly a kilobyte, and even that is only the decimal approximation. Option D is wrong because 1024 terabytes make a petabyte. Exam tip: the ladder is bit, byte, KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, and each step is 1024, that is 2 to the power 10.

The correct answer is C, Application software. MS Word is a word processor made by Microsoft, and any program written to do a particular job for the user is application software. It runs on top of an operating system and is used to type, edit, format and print documents, saving them with the .docx extension. Software is broadly of two kinds: system software, which runs the machine itself, and application software, which does the user’s work. Option A is wrong because an operating system such as Windows, Linux or Android manages the hardware and gives other programs a place to run; MS Word needs one to work. Option B is wrong because a processing device is hardware, like the CPU, and MS Word cannot be touched. Option D is wrong because input devices such as the keyboard, mouse and scanner feed data into the computer. Exam tip: Windows is system software, MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint are application software.