World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The most obvious effect of pressure during metamorphism is the reorientation of mineral crystals: platy minerals such as mica rotate and regrow so that their flat faces lie at right angles to the direction of greatest stress.

Foliation and lineation are the visible textures this reorientation produces, so they are its results rather than the effect itself. Lithification is the compaction of sediment into rock and is not a metamorphic process at all.

Answer: B

Correct answer: The Moon

Tides are raised chiefly by the Moon. Although the Sun is vastly more massive, tidal force depends on the difference in gravitational pull across the Earth rather than on its strength, and that difference falls off with the cube of distance - so the much nearer Moon has about twice the tidal effect of the Sun. Two bulges form, one facing the Moon and one on the opposite side, and as the Earth turns beneath them most coasts see two high tides a day. The Sun’s smaller contribution explains the fortnightly cycle. When Sun, Earth and Moon align at new and full moon the two effects add, giving the large spring tides; when the Sun and Moon are at right angles, at the quarters, they partly cancel, giving the small neap tides. Spring here means to leap up, and has nothing to do with the season. Local range varies enormously with coastal shape: the Bay of Fundy in Canada sees over 15 metres.

Answer: B

NH 24 joined Delhi to Lucknow, running about 438 km through Ghaziabad, Moradabad, Rampur, Bareilly and Sitapur.

Under the national renumbering it is now part of NH 9 and NH 30, but the older number remains the one asked for here.

Answer: D

East Timor was a colony of Portugal for over four centuries, until Portugal withdrew in 1975 and Indonesia invaded and annexed it.

It voted for independence in a United Nations referendum in 1999 and became fully independent as Timor-Leste in 2002.

Answer: A

The Sea of Japan is noted for its fishing. The cold Oyashio and the warm Tsushima currents meet in it, and the mixing brings up nutrients that make plankton and therefore fish abundant.

Sardine, squid, salmon and crab support major Japanese, Korean and Russian fisheries there.

Answer: B

The homolographic (equal-area) projection preserves area, so regions are shown in their true relative size. It does so at the cost of shape, which becomes increasingly distorted toward the edges.

Answer: D

India is Asia's largest producer of mica, the deposits of Jharkhand, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh yielding sheet mica of exceptional quality for electrical insulation.

Answer: B

The Rhine rises in the Swiss Alps, flows about 1,230 km through Germany and the Netherlands, and empties into the North Sea through a delta near Rotterdam.

It is the busiest waterway in Europe, and the port at its mouth handles more cargo than any other in the continent.

Answer: A

The rising coastlines of eastern and northern Canada and Scandinavia are explained by isostasy. The crust there was pressed down by the weight of the Pleistocene ice sheets, and since the ice melted it has been slowly rebounding as the mantle flows back beneath it.

The land is rising faster than the sea, so relative sea level continues to fall - by up to a centimetre a year in the Gulf of Bothnia.

Answer: B

Correct answer: The increasing share of a population living in towns and cities

Urbanisation is the rising proportion of a population living in urban areas. The proportion is the point: a country whose cities and villages grow at the same rate is not urbanising, however fast its cities expand. It is driven by migration from the countryside, by natural increase within cities, and by the reclassification of settlements as they cross the threshold of urban status. The pull is usually employment, education and services; the push is often agricultural distress. The world passed the halfway mark around 2007, and India is around 35 per cent urban and rising. Rapid urbanisation strains housing, water and transport, which is why the growth of informal settlements typically outpaces planning. The movement of people between countries is migration, a distinct process.