World Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Mount Everest, at 8,849 m, is the highest point in Asia and in the world. It stands on the border of Nepal and Tibet in the Greater Himalaya.

Kilimanjaro is Africa's highest, McKinley North America's, and Elbrus Europe's.

Answer: C

Africa covers about 30,065,000 km², roughly a fifth of the world's land surface.

Only Asia is larger. Africa spans about 8,000 km from Tunisia to the Cape and straddles the equator, so it has the widest range of tropical climates of any continent.

Answer: D

Antarctica covers about 13,209,000 km², making it the fifth largest continent - larger than Europe or Australia.

About 98 per cent of it is buried under ice averaging almost 2 km thick, which holds roughly 70 per cent of the world's fresh water.

Answer: C

The lowest point in South America is the Valdes Peninsula in Argentina, at about 40 m below sea level.

The Dead Sea is the lowest point in Asia, Lake Assal in Africa, and Lake Eyre in Australia.

Answer: B

Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, at 5,895 m, is the highest point in Africa. It is a dormant volcano standing alone on the plain rather than part of any range.

Although it lies only 3° south of the equator, it is high enough to carry glaciers, which are retreating fast.

Answer: C

Mauna Loa, on the island of Hawaii, is the world's largest active volcano. It rises 4,169 m above the sea and more than 9,000 m from its base on the ocean floor, and it makes up about half the island's area.

Its lava is very fluid, so it erupts as broad flows rather than explosively.

Answer: B

The deepest place in the Indian Ocean is the Sunda Trench (also called the Java Trench), reaching about 7,290 m south of the Indonesian archipelago.

It marks where the Indo-Australian plate subducts beneath the Eurasian plate - the same boundary that produced the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Answer: A

A bore is the wall of water that runs up a river when an incoming tide meets the outgoing river current. Where the estuary is shallow and funnel-shaped, the flood tide is squeezed until it steepens into a breaking wave and travels upstream.

The Hooghly, the Severn and the Qiantang all have well-known bores.

Answer: C

North America is the third largest continent, at about 24.3 million km².

Asia and Africa are larger; South America follows at about 17.8 million km², then Antarctica, Europe and Australia.

Answer: B

The SAARC Human Resource Development Centre is at Islamabad, Pakistan, established in 1999.

SAARC's specialised bodies are distributed among the member states: the secretariat is at Kathmandu, the Agricultural Centre at Dhaka, the Tuberculosis Centre at Kathmandu and the Documentation Centre at New Delhi.