UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

Isobars are atoms of different elements that have the same mass number but different atomic numbers. The mass number is the total of protons and neutrons in the nucleus, so isobars have the same number of nucleons arranged differently: more protons and fewer neutrons in one, the reverse in another.

The Ahar culture, also called the Banas culture, is a Chalcolithic (copper and stone age) culture of south-east Rajasthan, spread along the Banas river and its tributary the Berach, roughly between 3000 and 1500 BCE.

Heat produced per unit time is the power, and with a fixed battery voltage the power is P = V²/R. So the circuit gives the most heat when its total resistance is the smallest, and the smallest possible resistance comes from joining all three resistors in parallel.

Mature human red blood cells and platelets have no nucleus. Red blood cells lose their nucleus as they mature in the bone marrow; this gives their biconcave disc shape more room for haemoglobin to carry oxygen, but it also means they cannot divide or repair themselves and live only about…

Plant growth regulators, or plant hormones, are small molecules that control growth even in tiny amounts, and each main group comes from a different chemical family.

The Constitution of India borrowed the rule of law, the law-making procedure and the parliamentary system from the British Constitution, but took the independence of the judiciary from the US Constitution.

In dinitrogen pentoxide, nitrogen has an oxidation state of +5, the highest it can reach, because a nitrogen atom has five electrons in its outer shell.

Henry St. Clair Wilkins, an officer of the Royal Engineers, designed the Bombay Secretariat, completed in 1874 as part of the grand row of public buildings that rose along the Oval in Bombay after the old fort walls were pulled down in the 1860s. The building is in the Venetian…

Arikamedu, near Puducherry on the Coromandel coast, was a busy port from about the 2nd century BCE, and its remains show trade with the Roman world.

The Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) is the part of a bank's net demand and time liabilities (mainly its deposits) that it must keep as cash balances with the Reserve Bank of India.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) works under the Ministry of Home Affairs, which is the nodal ministry for disaster management in India.

Granite is an igneous rock, formed when molten magma cools and hardens. Because it cools slowly deep inside the earth's crust, its crystals grow large enough to be seen by the naked eye, so it is called an intrusive or plutonic igneous rock.

Jahanara Begum, the eldest daughter of Shah Jahan, wrote the Munis al-Arwah ("Confidant of Souls") in 1640 as a biography of Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti, the founder of the Chishti order in India.

Monopolistic competition is a market with many buyers and sellers, each seller offering a product that is slightly different from the others.

Delhi has three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and they are exactly these three. Humayun's Tomb was inscribed in 1993; built in the 1560s at the wish of his widow Bega Begum, it was the first garden-tomb on the Indian subcontinent and a model for the Taj Mahal.

The idea of human development, put forward by Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen, rests on four pillars: equity, sustainability, productivity and empowerment.

Handloom cotton weaving was India's largest industry, and it suffered most when British rule opened India to machine-made cloth. Before the 19th century, Indian muslins, calicoes and chintz from Bengal, Gujarat and the Coromandel coast were sold across the world.

Ashoka's empire covered almost the whole subcontinent, but the Brahmaputra valley lay beyond its eastern limit.

These two Neolithic sites of the Kashmir valley are known for people living in pits dug into the ground.

In ancient India the Magadhas were professional bards. Along with the Sutas, they memorised and recited genealogies of kings, dynastic histories and heroic tales, and sang the praises of rulers at court and on ceremonial occasions.