UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

For small swings the time period is T = 2π√(L/g), which contains the length and gravity but neither the mass nor the amplitude.

Apical meristem sits at the growing tips of stems and roots, and its dividing cells make them longer. Meristems are groups of cells that keep dividing throughout a plant's life.

Polyaromatic hydrocarbons are soot-related pollutants from incomplete burning; they are not among the gases that make up photochemical smog. Photochemical smog forms on warm, sunny days in cities with heavy traffic.

HIV spreads through body fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid and breast milk, not through droplets from coughing, sneezing or talking.

The operations fall in 1965, 1971, 1984 and 1999, in that order: Riddle, Cactus Lily, Meghdoot, Safed Sagar. Operation Riddle was the Indian Army's thrust towards Lahore in September 1965, during the second India–Pakistan war.

Moving a substance from low to high concentration is uphill work, and the cell pays for it with ATP.

Ribosomes stuck on the outer surface of the endoplasmic reticulum give it a grainy, rough look under the electron microscope.

An ion-exchange resin or zeolite swaps the calcium and magnesium ions that cause permanent hardness for sodium or hydrogen ions.

Smooth muscle is a muscular tissue, one of the four basic animal tissues, not a connective tissue. Animal tissues are of four kinds: epithelial, connective, muscular and nervous.

Copper in the +1 state is reduced to metal, so it is the oxidant; sulphur of Cu2S is oxidised, so it is the reductant.

The two hemispheres always have opposite seasons, so one hemisphere's summer solstice is the other's winter solstice. On about 21 June the Sun is overhead at the Tropic of Cancer; the northern hemisphere has its longest day and summer begins there, while the southern hemisphere has its shortest day.

The RER is studded with ribosomes, the actual sites where amino acids are joined into proteins. Ribosomes read the message carried by mRNA and link amino acids in the right order.

A medium more concentrated than the cell is hypertonic, so water leaves the cell by osmosis. In osmosis water moves across a selectively permeable membrane from the side with fewer dissolved particles to the side with more.

Aerenchyma is a kind of parenchyma whose cells enclose large air-filled spaces. These air cavities keep aquatic plants such as water hyacinth, lotus and Hydrilla afloat and let oxygen move down to roots and stems that sit in waterlogged soil or under water.

Together the two resins take out every dissolved ion, which leaves demineralised water. In the cation exchange resin (written RH), metal ions such as Ca2+, Mg2+ and Na+ are swapped for H+ ions.

Radiation carries heat as electromagnetic waves, and these waves travel even through empty space. Heat moves in three ways.

Lonar Lake in Buldhana district of Maharashtra fills a crater made by a meteorite impact. The Lonar crater was formed in prehistoric times when a meteorite struck the basalt rock of the Deccan Plateau.

Most Harappan seals were carved from steatite, a soft soapstone that hardens when fired. Steatite is easy to cut, so craftsmen could carve fine animal figures and signs of the Harappan script on it.

The Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, released in 2011, aimed at average GDP growth of 9% a year for 2012–17.

The Act provided dyarchy at the Centre and autonomy in the provinces, two separate reforms. The Government of India Act, 1935 abolished dyarchy in the provinces, which the 1919 Act had begun, and replaced it with provincial autonomy: provinces got responsible governments with ministers answerable to elected legislatures.