General Science Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Curd is sour because of lactic acid.

Lactobacillus ferments the milk sugar lactose into lactic acid, which lowers the pH and coagulates the milk protein casein - so the same acid both sours the milk and sets it.

Answer: C

Jute is called the golden fibre of India, for its colour and for the export earnings it once brought.

It is grown chiefly in West Bengal, Bihar and Assam, needing the hot humid climate and alluvial soil of the Ganga delta, and is used for sacking, hessian and rope.

Answer: C

Turpentine is obtained from gymnosperm wood - the resin of pine trees.

The oleoresin is tapped from the trunk and distilled: the volatile fraction is turpentine and the solid residue is rosin. In India it comes chiefly from the chir pine of the Himalayan foothills.

Answer: B

The botanical name of soyabean is Glycine max.

It is a legume, so it fixes nitrogen through root nodules, and its seed is about 40 per cent protein - the highest of any widely grown crop. Pisum sativum is the pea and Brassica nigra black mustard.

Answer: B

Bamboo is a grass - a member of the family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae.

It has the hollow jointed stem, the sheathing leaves and the flowering habit of a grass, and it is the fastest growing plant on earth, some species adding almost a metre a day.

Answer: D

Coffee was the earliest plantation crop introduced in India.

Tradition holds that Baba Budan brought seven beans from Yemen in the seventeenth century and planted them in the hills of Chikmagalur in Karnataka. Tea came much later, in the 1830s, under the British.

Answer: C

Quinine is obtained from the bark of the cinchona tree.

It was the first effective treatment for malaria, in use from the seventeenth century. Papaver is the opium poppy and Aconitum the source of aconite.

Answer: B

The study of bones is osteology, from the Greek osteon.

It covers the structure, development and diseases of bone, and is central to anatomy, archaeology and forensic science. Orology is the study of mountains and serology of blood serum.

Answer: B

Anthracite is the highest grade of coal, about 90 per cent carbon.

It is hard, black and lustrous, burns with almost no smoke and gives out the most heat. The rank descends through bituminous coal and lignite to peat, which is barely coal at all.

Answer: D

Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the skin, from the Greek derma.

It also covers hair and nails. The skin is the body's largest organ, about 1.7 square metres and a sixth of body weight in an adult.