List of practice Questions

Rural Development

There is a greater need today to make rural areas more vibrant through diversification into dairying, poultry, fisheries, vegetables and fruits and linking up the rural production centres with the urban and foreign markets to realise higher returns on the investments in the products. Moreover, infrastructure elements like credit and marketing, farmer-friendly agricultural policies and a constant appraisal and dialogue between farmers’ groups and state agricultural departments are essential to realise the full potential of the sector.

Today we cannot look at the environment and rural development as two distinct subjects. There is need to invent or procure alternate sets of eco-friendly technologies that lead to sustainable development in different circumstances such as organic farming. From these, each rural community can choose whatever will suit its purpose. We need to learn from, and also try out when found relevant, practices from the available set of ‘best practice’ illustrations to speed up this process of ‘learning by doing’. A good example of such practice is creating a group and channelising their savings through micro credit which functions like mini banks for the development of agriculture.

GDP and Welfare

GDP is the sum total of the value of goods and services created within the geographical boundary of a country in a particular year. In order to compare the GDP figures and other macroeconomic variables of different countries or to compare the GDP figures of the same country at different points of time, we take the help of real GDP instead of relying on current market prices. The ratio of nominal GDP to real GDP gives us an idea of how prices have moved from the base year to the current year. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI) are the other important ways to measure change of prices in an economy.

GDP gets distributed among the people as incomes and may treat higher level of GDP of a country as an index of greater well-being of the people of that country. But it may be incorrect to treat GDP as an index of the welfare of the country based on three reasons. Firstly, the distribution of GDP is not uniform, secondly, non-monetary exchanges are not accounted as part of economic activity and lastly, GDP does not take into account externalities.

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow:
"Smog, a term coined 50 years ago, from the words "Smoke" and "fog" is a dirty yellow-brown cloudy formation in lower portion of troposphere near the ground. Smog, we are most familiar with are Los Angles and London smog. Former is a example of photochemical smog, and later is a classical smog which contained sulphur dioxide, sulphur trioxide, sulphuric acid, heavy suspended particles, and water vapours. Los Angles smog was formed by photochemical reactions among nitrogen oxides and volatile hydrocarbons in presence of sunlight. This type of smog contains ozone, PAN, formaldehyde, and causes eye irritation, impairs pulmonary functions and damage plants and crops."

For any ecosystem, a constant input of energy is the basic requirement for its functioning and sustenance. The productivity of an ecosystem is calculated as the rate of biomass production expressed as gram/square meter/year (g. m⁻². yr⁻¹). The rate of production of organic matter during photosynthesis is called gross primary productivity (GPP). A considerable portion of GPP is consumed and utilized by plants during respiration. Therefore, the biomass available for heterotrophs is known as net primary productivity (NPP). The rate of formation of new organic matter by consumers is known as secondary productivity (SP).

Primary productivity depends on the plant species inhabiting a particular area, availability of nutrients, photosynthetic capacity of plants, and other environmental factors. The annual NPP of whole biosphere is approximately 170 billion tons, out of which, productivity of oceans is around 55 billion tons. In soil, the dead organic matter is converted to humus through humification. Humus undergoes slow degradation and is a reservoir of soil nutrients. Over a period of time, humus is further degraded by microbes and release nutrients by a process called mineralization.

Alcohols, Phenols and Ethers
Alcohols and phenols are formed when a hydrogen atom in a hydrocarbon, aliphatic and aromatic respectively, is replaced by -OH group. These classes of compounds find wide applications in industry as well as in day-to-day life. For instance, have you ever noticed that ordinary spirit used for polishing wooden furniture is chiefly a compound containing hydroxyl group, ethanol. The sugar we eat, the cotton used for fabrics, the paper we use for writing, are all made up of compounds containing -OH groups. The common name of an alcohol is derived from the common name of the alkyl group and adding the word alcohol to it. For example, $\text{CH}_3\text{OH}$ is methyl alcohol. The simplest hydroxy derivative of benzene is phenol. It is its common name and also an accepted IUPAC name. As structure of phenol involves a benzene ring, in its substituted compounds the terms ortho (1,2-disubstituted), meta (1,3-disubstituted) and para (1,4-disubstituted) are often used in the common names.
In ethers, the four electron pairs, i.e., the two bond pairs and two lone pairs of electrons on oxygen are arranged approximately in a tetrahedral arrangement. The bond angle is slightly greater than the tetrahedral angle due to the repulsive interaction between the two bulky (-R) groups.

Electrochemical cells
We can construct innumerable number of galvanic cells on the pattern of Daniell cell by taking combinations of different half-cells. Each half-cell consists of a metallic electrode dipped into an electrolyte. The two half-cells are connected by a metallic wire through a voltmeter and a switch externally. The electrolytes of the two half-cells are connected internally through a salt bridge. Sometimes, both the electrodes dip in the same electrolyte solution and in such cases we do not require a salt bridge.
For the cell
\[ \text{Ni(s)} \mid \text{Ni}^{2+}(\text{aq}) \parallel \text{Ag}^+(\text{aq}) \mid \text{Ag(s)} \] The cell reaction is:
\[ \text{Ni(s)} + 2\text{Ag}^+(\text{aq}) \rightarrow \text{Ni}^{2+}(\text{aq}) + 2\text{Ag(s)} \] Nernst equation relates the emf of the cell with standard emf and the concentration of reduced and oxidized species.

Mention any two reasons that substantiate that Bholi’s mother was a negative presence in her life. \hfill (Bholi)

If \[ A= \begin{bmatrix} \sin\alpha & -\cos\alpha \cos\alpha & \sin\alpha \end{bmatrix} \] and $ \alpha\in\left(\frac{\pi}{2},\frac{3\pi}{2}\right) $. If $ A+A^T=I $, then $ \alpha= $

If $\alpha, \beta$ are the roots of the equation $x^{2}-px+q=0$ and $\alpha>0$, $\beta>0$, then \[ \alpha^{\frac{1}{4}}+\beta^{\frac{1}{4}}=(p+6\sqrt{q}+4q^{\frac{1}{4}}\sqrt{p+2\sqrt{q}})^{\kappa}, \] where $\kappa$ is:

A misconception about an entrepreneur is:
Entrepreneurs are _______, not ________.

There are two spring–block systems as shown. They are in equilibrium. If $\dfrac{m_1}{m_2}=\alpha$ and $\dfrac{k_1}{k_2}=\beta$, then the ratio of the energies of the springs $\left(\dfrac{E_1}{E_2}\right)$ is: