World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The South Temperate Zone lies between the Tropic of Capricorn (23½°S) and the Antarctic Circle (66½°S).

Poleward of the Antarctic Circle is the South Frigid Zone, and between the two tropics is the Torrid Zone, so the other options name different belts.

Answer: C

The great crude oil markets are in both the Middle East, where most of the world's reserves lie, and the Far East, whose industrial economies are the largest importers.

Answer: A

The Cocos plate is a small oceanic plate lying off the west coast of Central America, between that landmass and the Pacific plate. Its subduction beneath the Caribbean plate drives the volcanoes of Central America.

Answer: B

The Tibetan Plateau averages about 16,000 feet (roughly 4,900 m) above sea level, which is why it is called the Roof of the World.

It covers about 2.5 million km² and is the highest and largest plateau on Earth, ringed by the Himalaya, Karakoram and Kunlun ranges.

Answer: D

All the conditions listed accompany the development of storms and frontal systems. They form where air is rising, which is the same as saying where surface pressure is low, and this happens both at the equator, through convection, and in the mid-latitudes, along the polar front.

Since the three statements describe one situation from different angles, the combined choice is correct.

Answer: C

Africa was called the Dark Continent by 19th-century Europeans, whose maps left its interior blank long after its coasts had been charted.

The phrase records European ignorance of Africa rather than anything about the continent, and it has fallen out of use for that reason.

Answer: A

Mountains raised after continental drift began, following the break-up of Pangaea, are the young mountains - the Himalayas, Alps, Andes and Rockies. They are high and jagged because erosion has had little time to wear them down.

Answer: A

Tides are produced by the gravitational pull of the Moon and, to a lesser extent, the Sun, so they depend on the position of the Moon relative to the Earth and the Sun.

When the three are in line at new and full moon the pulls add, giving high spring tides; when the Moon is at right angles to the Sun they partly cancel, giving low neap tides. Solar radiation plays no part in it.

Answer: D

The Earth rotates west to east, that is anticlockwise seen from above the North Pole.

This is why the Sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west, and why the day begins earlier at places further east.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Argon

Argon is the third most abundant gas in dry air, at about 0.93 per cent by volume - more than twenty times as much as carbon dioxide, which stands at roughly 0.04 per cent. It is a noble gas and almost entirely unreactive, which is what makes it useful: it fills incandescent bulbs to stop the filament oxidising, shields the weld pool in arc welding, and provides an inert atmosphere in metallurgy. Its abundance has a curious origin. Almost all of it is argon-40, produced by the radioactive decay of potassium-40 in the Earth’s crust and released into the atmosphere over billions of years. The same decay is the basis of potassium–argon dating. Neon, helium, methane and krypton follow it in trace quantities. Water vapour is excluded from these figures because its share varies from almost nothing to about four per cent depending on conditions.