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.
Galena is an ore of which metal?
Galena is lead sulphide, with the formula PbS, and is the principal ore from which lead is extracted; being a sulphide, it is concentrated by froth flotation and then roasted to the oxide before reduction.
Read the full explanation →Which one of the following metals has both malleability and ductility properties:
Malleability is the property of being beaten into thin sheets and ductility the property of being drawn into wires, and gold possesses both to the highest degree of any metal: a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of about one square metre and drawn into a wire of…
Read the full explanation →The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully tested a 3D-printed version of which rocket engine?
The space agency made the engine by fusing metal powder with a laser and tested it successfully, reducing the number of separate parts in the engine from fourteen to a single printed piece and cutting both the material used and the time taken to build it.
Read the full explanation →A digital twin is best described as
Because the model receives readings from the real machine, building or city as it works, it behaves as the real asset behaves, and engineers can test a change, foresee a failure or plan maintenance on the model without disturbing the original.
Read the full explanation →The National Strategy for Additive Manufacturing in India was brought out by which ministry?
The strategy was released by that ministry in 2022 to build a domestic ecosystem for additive manufacturing, covering machines, materials and software, the creation of Indian intellectual property and the skilling of workers, in line with the Make in India and self-reliance programmes.
Read the full explanation →India's first 3D-printed post office was inaugurated in which city?
The country's first 3D-printed post office was built at Cambridge Layout in Bengaluru and opened in 2023, its walls laid down by a concrete printing robot working from a digital design, with technical guidance from an Indian Institute of Technology.
Read the full explanation →XR, used as an umbrella term in this field, stands for
XR is the collective name for augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality together, and is used whenever a statement is meant to cover all the technologies that blend the physical world with digital content.
Read the full explanation →Which statement correctly describes augmented reality?
In augmented reality the room, street or object in front of the user stays visible and images, text or sound are added on top of it, as when a camera labels a monument or a windscreen display shows directions.
Read the full explanation →The phrase virtual reality is generally credited to
He popularised the phrase virtual reality in the late 1980s while building and selling some of the first commercial headsets and data gloves, and the name has stuck to the technology ever since.
Read the full explanation →The term metaverse was first used in which of the following works?
The novel, published in 1992, uses the word metaverse for a shared virtual city that people enter through goggles and move about in as avatars, and the term was taken up decades later for persistent three-dimensional online worlds.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is not a 3D printing process?
Milling on a computer-controlled machine is a subtractive process: a rotating cutter removes material from a solid block until the shape remains, so no layers are added.
Read the full explanation →Which file format is the standard used to send a model to a 3D printer?
An STL file describes the outer surface of a three-dimensional object as a mesh of triangles and carries no colour, material or texture information.
Read the full explanation →Stereolithography, the first commercially successful 3D printing process, was invented by
He invented stereolithography in the mid-1980s, in which a laser hardens liquid photopolymer resin point by point, and in doing so built the first working 3D printer; he also went on to found a company to sell the machines.
Read the full explanation →3D printing is also known by which of the following names?
The name comes from the method: material is added layer upon layer under the control of a digital model until the object is complete, so that nothing has to be cut away.
Read the full explanation →The grant of a lesser sentence in place of the one originally awarded, on account of a special fact such as the pregnancy of a woman, is called
A respite is the award of a lesser sentence than the one originally passed, granted because of some special circumstance personal to the convict, such as pregnancy or serious physical disability, and it is one of the six forms of clemency listed in Article 72.
Read the full explanation →In which case did the Supreme Court hold that the repeated re-promulgation of ordinances is a fraud on the Constitution?
The position was reaffirmed in Krishna Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar in 2017.
Read the full explanation →To which kind of bill is the President bound to give assent, having no veto at all?
The Twenty-fourth Amendment of 1971 made it obligatory for the President to give assent to a bill amending the Constitution, so that neither assent may be withheld nor the bill returned.
Read the full explanation →Substituting one form of punishment with a lighter form, as when a death sentence is replaced by imprisonment for life, is known as
Commutation changes the nature of the punishment itself, substituting a lighter kind for the one awarded, so that a death sentence becomes imprisonment for life or rigorous imprisonment becomes simple imprisonment.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following can a Governor not do under Article 161 of the Constitution?
Article 161 confines the Governor's power to offences against laws on matters to which the state's executive power extends, and it does not extend to pardoning a death sentence, which under Article 72 belongs to the President alone; a Governor also cannot touch a sentence passed by a court martial.
Read the full explanation →The pardoning power of the President of India is granted by which Article?
It empowers the President to grant pardon, reprieve, respite, remission, suspension or commutation of punishment in cases of a sentence by court martial, offences against laws on matters within the Union's executive power, and all cases of a sentence of death.
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