UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Dutch scientist Huygens designed the first working pendulum clock in 1656, after Galileo had noticed that a swinging lamp took the same time for each swing whether it swung far or little, the property called isochronism.

In simple harmonic motion the acceleration equals minus omega squared times the displacement, so it grows with displacement and is greatest at the ends of the path, where its value is A omega squared and it points back towards the centre.

Potential energy is proportional to the square of the displacement, so it is greatest where the displacement is greatest, that is at the two ends of the path, where the body is momentarily at rest and its kinetic energy is zero.

The time period varies inversely as the square root of g, so if g falls to one sixth, the period is multiplied by the square root of six, about 2.45 times; the pendulum swings more slowly and a pendulum clock taken to the moon would lose time badly.

The time period varies as the square root of the length, so multiplying the length by four multiplies the period by the square root of four, that is by two; to double the period of a pendulum its length must be made four times.

A second's pendulum is one whose time period is exactly two seconds, so that each swing from one side to the other takes one second.

The time period of a simple pendulum is two pi times the square root of the length divided by g, in which the mass of the bob does not appear at all; a heavy bob and a light bob of the same length keep the same time, which is the…

A swing is a pendulum, and its speed is greatest at the lowest point, where all the potential energy gained at the top has turned into kinetic energy.

In simple harmonic motion the velocity is given by omega times the square root of A squared minus x squared.

The French set up their first factory in India at Surat in 1668, under François Caron. The French East India Company was founded in 1664 under the patronage of King Louis XIV and his minister Colbert, making it the last of the major European companies to reach India.

Napoleon defeated Austria at Wagram near Vienna in July 1809, and Austria signed the Treaty of Schönbrunn in October 1809.

The focus, also called the hypocentre, is the point inside the earth where the energy of an earthquake is first released and from where its waves start.

The Lekhapaddhati is a collection of model legal and administrative documents from Gujarat, compiled around the thirteenth century. The text gives sample forms of documents that scribes used: land grants, sale deeds, loan bonds, mortgage papers, treaties between kings, and letters of appointment.

Where evapotranspiration is much greater than rainfall, water moves upward in the soil and calcium carbonate builds up near the surface.

Bhanumati is Chakrapanidatta's commentary on the Sushruta Samhita, the classical Indian text on surgery. Chakrapanidatta was a physician of eleventh-century Bengal, in the time of the Pala kings.

The Palar and the Pennar rise on the Karnataka plateau and flow east into the Bay of Bengal, while the Periyar and the Kalinadi flow west into the Arabian Sea.

These are the words of the Nobel committee's citation for Jimmy Carter, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

In his famous Railway Minute of 1853, Governor-General Lord Dalhousie argued for a network of trunk railway lines, stressing their value for moving troops quickly.

The Luddites demanded a minimum wage and the right to form trade unions, while they opposed machinery that took away their work.

Olympe de Gouges wrote this in her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in 1791. Olympe de Gouges was a French writer and one of the most active women of the French Revolution.