UPSC GK Questions 2026

Lumps of calcium carbide hidden in a crate of mangoes react with the moisture in the air and release acetylene gas, which forces the fruit to colour quickly, though the pulp inside stays unripe and tasteless.

Indian food standards divide preservatives into two classes. Class I preservatives are the natural ones that cooks have always used, and no limit is placed on the quantity: common salt, sugar, dextrose, spices, vinegar or acetic acid, honey and edible vegetable oils.

In lyophilisation the material is first frozen and then placed under a strong vacuum, so that the ice changes directly into vapour without passing through the liquid state.

Pasteurisation is not sterilisation: it is a mild heating that kills disease-causing organisms such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Salmonella and Brucella and most spoilage bacteria, while leaving the taste and nutritive value of milk largely unchanged.

Khesari dal, botanically Lathyrus sativus and also called grass pea, is a hardy pulse that survives drought and is therefore sometimes mixed with arhar dal or besan.

Argemone mexicana, the prickly poppy known in India as satyanashi, has seeds that look very like mustard seeds, so its oil is a classic adulterant of mustard oil.

A harvested fruit is still a living tissue that keeps respiring, using up its own sugars and acids and giving off heat, carbon dioxide and ethylene.

A quasi-federal constitution has the basic features of a federation but also a strong unitary bias, and the Indian Constitution is the best known example.

The bora is a cold, dry and often violent north-easterly wind that rushes down from the Dinaric Alps onto the eastern Adriatic coast of Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro, and it also reaches Trieste in Italy.

The English jurist John Austin developed legal positivism, the view that law is the command of the sovereign backed by a sanction, kept separate from questions of morality.

J is from Assam, which had a population density of 398 persons per square kilometre in Census 2011, far higher than the other three States.

Keynes argued that in a depression the government should spend more than it earns, even by borrowing, to revive demand and employment.

Mahishmati, an important city of ancient central India, stood on the Narmada and is usually identified with Maheshwar in present-day Madhya Pradesh, though some scholars place it at Mandhata (Omkareshwar).

The sour taste of tamarind comes from tartaric acid, not oxalic acid, so this statement is not correct. Many natural acids give foods their sour taste.

The lion is not found among the animals carved on Harappan seals, although the tiger appears on several of them.

Ellora has Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves, and the Kailasa temple was carved out of a single rock, not built of stone blocks and bricks.

River terraces mark old valley floors and may be of bedrock or alluvium, but they are products of erosion, not deposition, so statement 3 is wrong.

The molar mass of sodium-23 is 23 g, so 46 g is exactly 2 moles, and 2 moles contain twice the Avogadro number of atoms.

In this reaction water accepts a proton (H⁺) from the hydrogen sulphate ion and becomes the hydronium ion, H₃O⁺, and a proton acceptor is a base.

The flying fish is a bony fish with a backbone, gills, scales and fins, so it belongs to the class of fishes; it only glides over the water on its large, wing-like pectoral fins.