World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

About a quarter of the Netherlands lies below sea level, and roughly half of it is less than a metre above.

The land has been reclaimed from the sea over centuries as polders, and it is kept dry by a system of dykes, dunes and pumping stations. Its lowest point is about 7 m below sea level.

Answer: B

The shortest day in the northern hemisphere is about 22 December, the winter solstice, when the Sun is overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn and the northern hemisphere is tilted furthest from it.

The same date is the longest day in the southern hemisphere.

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: B

North America accounts for about 16.3 per cent of the world's land area, with roughly 24.3 million km² out of about 149 million.

Only Asia and Africa hold larger shares, at about 30 and 20 per cent respectively.

Answer: B

Europe covers about 9,938,000 km², making it the second smallest continent after Australia.

Its boundary with Asia is conventional rather than physical, taken along the Urals, the Ural river, the Caspian, the Caucasus and the Black Sea.

Answer: A

The Friendship Bridge over the Oxus (Amu Darya) connects Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, linking Termez to Hairatan.

Opened in 1982, it was the route by which Soviet forces entered and later withdrew from Afghanistan, and it remains the main overland freight crossing between the two countries.

Answer: C

The Suez Canal joins the Mediterranean Sea at Port Said to the Red Sea at Suez, cutting across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt.

Opened in 1869 and about 193 km long, it is a sea-level canal with no locks, and it shortens the Europe–Asia voyage by some 7,000 km.

Answer: A

The Mariana Trench in the western Pacific is the deepest part of any ocean, reaching about 10,994 m at Challenger Deep.

It is formed where the Pacific plate subducts beneath the smaller Mariana plate. Everest, inverted into it, would still leave over two kilometres of water above its summit.

Answer: A

The Yellow Sea lies between mainland China and the Korean peninsula, a shallow northern arm of the East China Sea.

Its name comes from the yellow loess silt carried into it by the Hwang Ho, which colours the water. It is nowhere more than about 100 m deep.

Answer: B

Of those listed, the Mediterranean is the largest sea, covering about 2.5 million km².

The Caribbean is about 2.75 million km² by some reckonings but is usually counted as a sea of the Atlantic proper; the Bering Sea covers about 2 million km² and the East China Sea only 1.25 million.