Geography Quiz 1B

1.- Major Religions and source locations:

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism

o Buddhism: Northern India
o Christianity ( Roman Catholicism): Middle East and Roman Empire.
o Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons): New York, USA.
o Confucianism: China
o Eastern Orthodox: Constantinople, Turkey.
o Hinduism: India
o Islam: Medina and Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
o Judaism: Israel / Palestine
o Protestantism: Europe
o Shinto: Japan
o Sikhism: India
o Taoism: China

2.- Major Languages

o Chinese / Mandarin.
o Spanish (Spain and most of Latin America).
o English (most widely spoken – often as a second language).
o Bengali (India, Bangladesh).
o Hindi (India).
o Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil).



3.- What is the North Magnetic Pole?
It is where compass needles point. It is located in Canada’s Northwest Territories about 900 miles away from absolute North Pole. It moves continuously, so to determine true north you have to look to a recent topographic map which should note the “magnetic declination”, which means the degrees east of west that you’ll need to rotate your compass to determine which way is actually north. Every 300,000 to 1 million years, the magnetic pole flips from north to south or form south to north. The Magnetic North Pole wanders, fortunately slowly enough that the compass is useful for navigation. At random intervals (averaging several hundred thousand years) the Earth's field reverses (the north and south geomagnetic poles change places with each other).

4.- Is the North Magnetic Pole antipodal to the South Magnetic Pole?
Its southern hemisphere counterpart is the South Magnetic Pole. Because the Earth's magnetic field is not exactly symmetrical, the North and South Magnetic Poles are not antipodal: a line drawn from one to the other does not pass through the geometric centre of the Earth.

5.- Why is a book of maps called an atlas?
The term “atlas” comes from the name of a mythological Greek figure, Atlas. As a punishment for fighting with the Titans against the gods, Atlas was forced to hold up the planet Earth ant the heavens on his shoulders. Because Atlas was often pictured on ancient books of maps, these became known as atlases.

6.- What do a.m. and p.m. mean?
Ante Meridiem and post meridiem, which mean before midday and after midday, respectively.

7.- When and why were time zones established?
There was no standard time until the late 1800s. Each town had a different time. A time standard was established for scheduling trains. Railroad companies in USA, could not keep track of all the different times in all the different towns they went through so a uniform standard was needed.

8.- What is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)?
UTC is the time at Greenwich, England.

9.- Into how many time zones is the world divided?
In 1878, Sir Sanford Fleming proposed dividing the world into 24 time zones, each spaced 15 degrees of longitude apart. The contiguous US was covered by four time zones. By 1895, most states had begun to institute the standard time zones of Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific on their own. But it wasn’t until 1918 that Congress passed the standard Time Act, establishing official time zones in the U.S.
http://www.worldtimezone.com/datetime.html


10.- What happens when I cross the International Date Line?
If you travel across from east to west, such as from the USA to Japan, you add a day ( Sunday becomes Monday). When you travel west to east, you subtract a day.

11.- What time is it at the North and South Poles?
Because time zones get narrower the farther you get form the equator, time zones would be very thin near the North and South Poles. To simplify things, researchers living in Antarctica use UTC.

12.- Why is Russia always one hour ahead?
In an effort to take advantage of the limited amount of light available in winter months, each of Russia’s time zones are one hour ahead of the standard time for those zones. Russia also follows Daylight Saving Time and adds an additional hour during spring and summer months.

13.- How many time zones does China have?
Five time zones, but the entire country uses one time – eight hours ahead of UTC.