CTET 2015 Previous Year GK Questions with Answers

The correct answer is A, B, D and E, that is landslide, tsunami and floods. An earthquake is the shaking of the ground when energy stored along a fault is suddenly released, and that shaking sets off further hazards. On a steep slope the tremor loosens soil and rock and brings down a landslide. Under the sea, a sudden movement of the ocean floor lifts a huge column of water and sends out a tsunami, as in the Indian Ocean in December 2004. Floods follow when the shaking cracks a dam or an embankment, or when a landslide dams a river and the water later bursts through. Option B is wrong because lightning and thundering are weather events born in tall cumulonimbus clouds and have nothing to do with movement inside the earth. Option C is wrong because it keeps only the landslide and leaves out the tsunami. Option D is wrong because it adds floods but still misses the tsunami. Exam tip: earthquake – landslide, tsunami and dam-burst floods; lightning and thunder belong to a thunderstorm.

The correct answer is A, Urea. Human beings are ureotelic, which means the main nitrogen waste they pass out is urea. When the body breaks down extra amino acids, ammonia is produced, and ammonia is highly poisonous even in small amounts. The liver converts it into urea through the ornithine cycle, and urea is far less harmful and dissolves easily in water. The blood carries urea to the kidneys, where the nephrons filter it out, and it leaves the body in urine. B is wrong because ammonia is the chief waste of fish and other animals that live in water, where it can be washed away at once by the surrounding water. C is wrong because uric acid is the waste of birds, insects and reptiles, which need to save water, so they pass it as a near solid paste. D is wrong because ammonium chloride is not a human excretory product. Exam tip: fish ammonotelic, humans ureotelic, birds uricotelic.

The correct answer is B, Oil painting. Painting in oil on canvas was unknown in India before European artists and the colonial art schools brought it in during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indian painters had worked in tempera and watercolour on walls, palm leaf, paper and cloth. Raja Ravi Varma of Kerala is the best known Indian master of the new medium, using oil and academic modelling for Hindu mythological subjects such as Shakuntala and Damayanti.

Option A, mural art, is ancient in India, from Ajanta and Bagh to the Kerala temple walls. Option D, miniatures, are equally Indian, from the Pala palm leaf manuscripts through the Mughal, Rajasthani and Pahari schools. Option C, perspective, is the tempting distractor: systematic linear perspective did come with European art, but the question asks what was introduced as a form of painting, and the oil medium is the standard answer to this stem.

The correct answer is C, Mexico. Milpa is the name given to shifting cultivation in Mexico and in the neighbouring parts of Central America, where maize, beans and squash are grown together on a patch cleared from the forest. In shifting cultivation a plot is cleared by cutting and burning the trees, cropped for two or three years until the ash-fed soil loses its fertility, and then left fallow while the farmer moves to a fresh patch. Because the same practice grew up in forest belts across the world, it carries a different local name in each region. A is wrong because in India it is called jhum in the north-east, podu in Andhra Pradesh and bewar or dahiya in Madhya Pradesh. B is wrong because in Malaysia and Indonesia it is known as ladang. D is wrong because in Brazil it is called roca or coivara. Exam tip: milpa in Mexico, ladang in Malaysia, roca in Brazil, chena in Sri Lanka and jhum in north-east India.