World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Outward from the Sun the order is Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

The four inner planets are small and rocky; beyond the asteroid belt come the four giants. Uranus comes before Neptune, and Earth before Mars, which is where the other options go wrong.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Africa

The Strait of Gibraltar divides Spain from Morocco, and so separates Europe from Africa. It is only about 14 km wide at its narrowest, and it is the sole natural link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. That narrowness matters oceanographically: the Mediterranean loses far more water to evaporation than its rivers supply, so a surface current runs steadily in from the Atlantic while denser, saltier water flows out beneath it. Geologically the strait is young. Around five million years ago it was closed, the Mediterranean largely dried out, and the Atlantic then broke back through in what is called the Zanclean flood. Europe is separated from Asia not by a strait but by the Ural Mountains and the Bosporus, which is a different waterway altogether.

Answer: A

South America covers about 17,819,000 km², making it the fourth largest continent.

It stretches about 7,400 km from the Caribbean to Cape Horn, and contains both the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon, and its driest desert, the Atacama.

Answer: C

In the southern hemisphere land covers only about a fifth of the surface, giving a land-to-ocean ratio of roughly 1 to 4. It is often called the water hemisphere for this reason.

The northern hemisphere is far more balanced, at close to 1 to 1.5, because almost all of Eurasia and North America lie there.

Answer: D

Multi-purpose river projects aim at all of these together - irrigation from stored water, hydroelectric power, and flood control with improved navigation. Serving several ends at once is what makes them multi-purpose.

Answer: B

Meteorology is the study of the atmosphere's day-to-day behaviour - that is, of the weather - and of the physical processes that produce it.

Climatology deals with the same atmosphere over decades rather than days, and cyclogenesis is one particular process, the formation of a cyclone.

Answer: D

Death Valley in California lies 86 m below sea level, the lowest point in North America. The other options belong to other continents: the Valdes Peninsula is in Argentina, Lake Eyre in Australia and Ellsworth in Antarctica.

Answer: B

Soil fertility is greatest in the slightly acid to neutral range, about pH 6.0 to 7.2. In this band nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and the micronutrients are all reasonably soluble at once, and soil bacteria are most active.

Below about pH 5.5 aluminium and manganese become toxic and phosphorus is locked up; above pH 8 iron, zinc and manganese become unavailable.

Answer: D

The Kalahari is a large semi-desert of southern Africa, covering about 900,000 km² across Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

Unlike a true desert it carries grass and scrub, since it receives 100 to 500 mm of rain a year, but the sand holds no surface water.

Answer: C

The Pacific Ocean is by far the largest part of the hydrosphere, covering about 165 million km² - roughly a third of the Earth's surface and about half of all ocean water.

The Atlantic covers about 106 million km² and the Indian Ocean about 73 million km², so neither approaches it.