Daily Quiz #48 UPSC Prelims Marathon – December 27, 2019

Explanation: Precipitation is the falling of water from the sky in different forms. They all form from the clouds which are raised about 8 to 16 kilometers (4 to 11 miles) above the ground in the earth’s troposphere. Precipitation takes place whenever any or all forms of water particles fall from these high levels of the atmosphere and reach the earth surface. The drop to the ground is caused by frictional drag and gravity. When one falling particle drops from the cloud, it leaves behind a turbulent wake, causing faster and continued drops.
The most common types of precipitation:
•Rain: Drops of liquid water fall from the clouds when water vapor condenses around dust particles in the clouds, forming tiny droplets that eventually get too big for the cloud to hold so they fall, growing larger as they collect more water on their way down.
•Snow: Snow is ice that falls from the sky. Each snowflake is a delicately complex arrangement of ice crystals. A snowflake forms when water vapor sublimates, or turns directly from a gas into its solid form, ice.
•Hail: Hail is ice that falls from the sky, often in round shapes. Hailstones form within thunderstorm clouds when upward moving air keeps pellets of frozen water from falling. The pellets grow larger as drops of very cold water hit them and freeze. Eventually the balls of ice become so large and heavy that they fall to the ground as hailstones. The largest documented hailstone weighted more than one and a half pounds! Scientists estimate that it reached a speed of more than 80 mph as it fell toward Earth.
•Sleet: Sleet is like slush falling from the sky. Sleet forms when raindrops freeze into ice as they fall to the ground. They are usually smaller and wetter than hailstones.

Explanation: High and low tides are caused by the moon. The moon’s gravitational pull generates something called the tidal force. The tidal force causes Earth—and its water—to bulge out on the side closest to the moon and the side farthest from the moon. These bulges of water are high tides.
As the Earth rotates, your region of Earth passes through both of these bulges each day. When you’re in one of the bulges, you experience a high tide. When you’re not in one of the bulges, you experience a low tide. This cycle of two high tides and two low tides occurs most days on most of the coastlines of the world.
Tides are really all about gravity, and when we’re talking about the daily tides, it’s the moon’s gravity that’s causing them.
As Earth rotates, the moon’s gravity pulls on different parts of our planet. Even though the moon only has about 1/100th the mass of Earth, since it’s so close to us, it has enough gravity to move things around. The moon’s gravity even pulls on the land, but not enough for anyone to tell (unless they use special, really precise instruments).
When the moon’s gravity pulls on the water in the oceans, however, someone’s bound to notice. Water has a much easier time moving around, and the water wants to bulge in the direction of the moon. This is called the tidal force.
Because of the tidal force, the water on the side of the moon always wants to bulge out toward the moon. This bulge is what we call a high tide. As your part of the Earth rotates into this bulge of water, you might experience a high tide.

Explanation: Palk Strait, inlet of the Bay of Bengal between southeastern India and northern Sri Lanka. It is bounded on the south by Pamban Island (India), Adam’s (Rama’s) Bridge (a chain of shoals), the Gulf of Mannar, and Mannar Island (Sri Lanka). The southwestern portion of the strait is also called Palk Bay. The strait is 40 to 85 miles (64 to 137 km) wide, 85 miles long, and less than 330 feet (100 metres) deep. The port of Jaffna, the commercial centre for northern Sri Lanka, lies on the strait. The shoals and numerous islands long have limited transit through the strait to smaller vessels. In addition, periods of unrest in northern Sri Lanka have disrupted shipping across the strait between Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu state in India. It connects the water of Arabian sea and Bay of Bengal.

Explanation: A lichen is not a single organism; it is a stable symbiotic association between a fungus and algae and/or cyanobacteria. Like all fungi, lichen fungi require carbon as a food source; this is provided by their symbiotic algae and/or cyanobacteria, that are photosynthetic.
The lichen symbiosis is thought to be a mutualism, since both the fungi and the photosynthetic partners, called photobionts, benefit.

Explanation: Sedimentary rocks are made due to weathering, erosion and deposition of sediments of igneous and metamorphic rocks. These rocks are layered rocks, so fossils are found in these type of rocks. Heat and pressure can convert the fossils of animals into petroleum and trees and plants convert into coal. The fossil fuel that we use is very old. We are mostly using coal and petroleum formed before 30 crore years ago in Carboniferous Period of Palaeozoic Era.