Quiz · Medium
Earth's record-holding features, latitude and time zones, plate boundaries, landforms and climate processes like rain shadows, monsoons and the Coriolis effect.
What is the largest ocean on Earth?
Atlantic Ocean
Indian Ocean
Southern Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific covers about a third of Earth's surface, more than all the land combined. The Atlantic is second.
What is the largest desert on Earth by area?
Sahara
Antarctic Desert
Arabian Desert
Gobi
A desert is defined by low precipitation, not heat, so Antarctica is the largest. The Sahara is the largest HOT desert, which is why it is the common answer.
Where is the deepest known point in the ocean?
Puerto Rico Trench
Java Trench
Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench
Tonga Trench
The Challenger Deep in the western Pacific is roughly 10,900 m (about 35,800 ft) deep.
The Tropic of Cancer (about 23.5° N) marks:
The northernmost latitude where the sun can be directly overhead, at the June solstice
The boundary of the Arctic Circle
The line where day and night are always equal
The northern edge of the Sahara
The tropics exist because Earth's axis is tilted about 23.5°. Equal day and night everywhere happens at the equinoxes, not along a fixed line.
Earth rotates 360° in 24 hours. A city at 45° E longitude has a local solar time how far from Greenwich (0°)?
1 hour behind
3 hours ahead
4.5 hours ahead
3 hours behind
360° ÷ 24 h = 15° per hour, so 45° ÷ 15 = 3 hours. East of Greenwich sees the sun earlier, so it is ahead.
Why do winds and ocean currents curve to the right in the Northern Hemisphere?
The Coriolis effect caused by Earth's rotation
The Moon's gravity
Differences in ocean salinity
Earth's magnetic field
Because Earth rotates, moving air and water are deflected right in the Northern Hemisphere and left in the Southern. It shapes hurricane rotation and ocean gyres.
Moist air from the ocean rises over a mountain range. Which side of the range is likely to be a dry desert?
The windward side
The leeward side, in the rain shadow
Neither; both sides get equal rain
The summit only
Rising air cools and drops its moisture on the windward slope. The descending air on the leeward side warms and dries out, as in Nevada's deserts east of the Sierra Nevada.
The Himalayas formed mainly from which type of plate boundary?
Divergent boundary between two oceanic plates
Transform boundary
Oceanic-continental subduction
Continental-continental convergence (India colliding with Eurasia)
Neither continental plate sinks easily, so the crust crumples upward into very high mountains. Oceanic-continental subduction creates volcanic ranges like the Andes.
The 'Ring of Fire,' with most of the world's volcanoes and earthquakes, surrounds which ocean?
Atlantic
Indian
Pacific
Arctic
Subduction zones ring the Pacific basin, from the Andes to Japan to Indonesia.
A fan-shaped landform built where a river deposits sediment as it enters the sea is a:
Delta
Meander
Estuary
Oxbow lake
Deltas (like the Nile or Mississippi) form by deposition when the river slows down. An estuary is where fresh and salt water mix at a river mouth, often without a large sediment buildup.
Norway's fjords are long, deep, steep-sided inlets formed by:
River erosion
Volcanic activity
Glaciers carving valleys later flooded by the sea
Coral reef growth
Glaciers carve U-shaped valleys deeper than rivers can. When the ice melted, the sea flooded them. River valleys tend to be V-shaped.
Which lake is the deepest in the world and holds the most fresh water by volume?
Lake Superior
Caspian Sea
Lake Victoria
Lake Baikal
Siberia's Lake Baikal is over 1,600 m deep and holds about 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water. The Caspian Sea is the largest lake by AREA, but it is salty.
A monsoon is best described as:
A single very large tropical storm
A seasonal reversal of wind direction that brings a wet season and a dry season
A cold ocean current along a western coast
A sudden flood caused by a dam failure
In South Asia, summer winds blow from the warm Indian Ocean bringing heavy rain; winter winds blow from the land and are dry.
A narrow strip of land connecting two larger land masses, like Panama, is called a(n):
Peninsula
Isthmus
Strait
Archipelago
An isthmus connects two land masses. A strait is the water version: a narrow channel connecting two bodies of water. A peninsula is attached on only one side.
