Static general knowledge is the larger part of every UPSC general studies paper. The notices name the same areas again and again: the history of India and the national movement, Indian and world geography, polity and the Constitution, the economy and social development, and general science with environment and ecology. The balance shifts from exam to exam. NDA puts about half of its General Knowledge part on Physics, Chemistry and General Science. CSE favours polity, modern history, environment and the economy. CAPF adds security and human rights, and CDS spreads its questions across polity, history, geography, the economy and school science.
GK24's GK notes are written topic by topic in English and Hindi, as short, fact-first chapters that are easy to revise. They cover Indian Polity, Indian History, Geography, Indian Economy, General Science, Environment and Ecology, Art and Culture, Computer, and the fact lists of awards, sports, books and days. A new chapter is added in each subject as the series grows. Each note carries practice questions, and those that have appeared in an exam say which exam and year. Start with Polity and modern history, then Geography, the Economy and Science. Read a note, take its topic quiz, and come back to it in your monthly revision.
Which one of the following is a minor tectonic plate?
It lies between South America and the Pacific plate and is one of the well known minor plates, along with the Cocos, Arabian, Philippine, Caribbean, Juan de Fuca, Scotia, Caroline and Fuji plates.
Read the full explanation →The San Andreas Fault of California is an example of which type of plate boundary?
Along the San Andreas Fault the Pacific plate and the North American plate slide horizontally past each other.
Read the full explanation →The Himalaya was formed by which type of plate boundary?
The Indian plate moved northwards and met the Eurasian plate. Both carry light continental crust, so neither could sink far into the mantle; instead the sediments of the Tethys Sea lying between them were compressed, folded and thrust upwards to form the Himalaya, and the collision is still going on…
Read the full explanation →The concept of sea floor spreading was given by:
After the detailed mapping of the ocean floor during and after the Second World War revealed mid-oceanic ridges, deep trenches and a surprisingly thin cover of sediment, Hess proposed in 1961 that molten material rises along the ridge, forms new ocean floor and pushes the older floor away on both…
Read the full explanation →The Tethys Sea separated which two landmasses after the break-up of Pangaea?
When Pangaea began to break about two hundred million years ago, it parted into a northern mass called Laurasia or Angaraland and a southern mass called Gondwanaland, and the long narrow Tethys Sea lay between the two.
Read the full explanation →Which pair of forces did Wegener suggest as the cause of continental drift?
Wegener attributed the horizontal movement of the continents to the pole-fleeing force, which arises from the rotation of the earth and the bulge of the equator, and to the tidal force, which arises from the attraction of the moon and the sun.
Read the full explanation →In Wegener's theory, the single great ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea was called:
Wegener held that about two hundred and fifty million years ago all the land of the earth lay together as one mass, Pangaea, and that one enormous ocean, Panthalassa, surrounded it.
Read the full explanation →The theory of continental drift was propounded by:
Wegener, a German meteorologist and climatologist, put forward the continental drift theory in 1912 and developed it in his book The Origin of Continents and Oceans; he argued that all the continents once formed a single landmass, Pangaea, which broke up about two hundred million years ago.
Read the full explanation →Peat, long used as a fuel, is formed from the partly decayed remains of which plant?
Sphagnum is a bog moss, a bryophyte, whose dead cells hold many times their own weight of water; in waterlogged and acidic bogs its remains decay only partly and pile up as peat, which is cut, dried and burnt as fuel and is also used in nurseries to keep soil…
Read the full explanation →The endosperm of an angiosperm seed is triploid because it is formed by:
An angiosperm shows double fertilisation: of the two male gametes brought by the pollen tube, one fuses with the egg to give a diploid zygote, and the other fuses with the two polar nuclei of the central cell.
Read the full explanation →Naked seeds, that is seeds not enclosed in a fruit, are the characteristic feature of:
The word itself means naked seed: the ovules are not enclosed in an ovary, so after fertilisation the seeds lie exposed on the surface of the scales of a cone and no fruit is formed.
Read the full explanation →Which plant is called a living fossil?
It is the only surviving species of its order, has remained almost unchanged for many millions of years and is known from fossils of the age of the dinosaurs, which is why it is called a living fossil; it is a gymnosperm with fan-shaped leaves, grown widely as an ornamental…
Read the full explanation →Coralloid roots containing nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria are found in:
Besides its normal roots, Cycas bears small branched roots that grow upward near the surface and look like coral; these coralloid roots hold cyanobacteria such as Anabaena and Nostoc, which fix atmospheric nitrogen and supply it to the plant.
Read the full explanation →The brown colour of Laminaria and Sargassum is due to which pigment?
Brown algae of the class Phaeophyceae contain chlorophyll a and c along with the xanthophyll pigment fucoxanthin, and because fucoxanthin masks the green chlorophyll the plant looks olive green to deep brown; Laminaria, Sargassum, Fucus, Ectocarpus and Dictyota are examples, and many of them bear air bladders that keep the…
Read the full explanation →Chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b are the main pigments of which class of algae?
The green algae owe their colour to chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b, which are not masked by any other pigment; Chlamydomonas, Volvox, Spirogyra, Ulothrix and Chara belong here, and their stored food is starch.
Read the full explanation →Agar, used in laboratory culture media and in ice cream, is obtained from:
Agar is obtained chiefly from Gelidium and Gracilaria, members of the Rhodophyceae, and it is used to prepare the solid media on which microbes and plant tissues are grown, as well as in jellies and ice cream.
Read the full explanation →Which group of plants is regarded as the first to develop vascular tissue?
Ferns and their relatives, such as Selaginella, Lycopodium, Equisetum, Pteris, Adiantum and Marsilea, are the first plants with xylem to conduct water and minerals and phloem to conduct food, and the first with a true root, stem and leaf; for that reason they are also called the vascular cryptogams.
Read the full explanation →Bryophytes are called the amphibians of the plant kingdom because they:
Bryophytes such as Marchantia, Riccia, Funaria and Sphagnum grow on soil, rocks and tree trunks, but their male gametes are flagellate and must swim through a film of water to reach the egg, so fertilisation cannot take place in dry conditions.
Read the full explanation →In Eichler's classification, which group includes the plants that do not bear seeds?
Eichler divided the plant kingdom into two: the Cryptogamae, meaning plants with hidden reproductive organs and no seeds, which include the algae or thallophytes, the bryophytes and the pteridophytes; and the Phanerogamae, the seed bearing plants.
Read the full explanation →Which judgment fixed 24 April 1973 as the cut-off date for the protection that the Ninth Schedule gives to laws?
Decided in 1981, it held that laws placed in the Ninth Schedule before 24 April 1973, the day the Kesavananda Bharati judgment was delivered, stay protected, while those added afterwards can be examined for damage to the basic structure, a position confirmed in I.R.
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