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Geography?

Countries, oceans, mountains, and the border disputes between them. 21 questions and counting.

What is the difference between the UK, Great Britain, and England?England is one country; Great Britain is the island holding England, Scotland, and Wales; the UK adds Northern Ireland. …
What is the largest country in the world?Russia, by a huge margin, spanning about 6.6 million square miles across eleven time zones and two continents. It is nea…
Why is the ocean blue?Water itself absorbs red light and scatters blue, so deep water genuinely is blue, not just reflecting the sky. That is …
What is the tallest mountain in the world?Everest is the highest above sea level at 29,032 feet, but Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller base to peak, most of it underw…
How many countries are there in the world?195 is the standard answer: 193 UN member states plus two observers, Vatican City and Palestine. But the real number is …
Why do we have time zones?Because the Earth rotates, so noon happens at different moments in different places. Before railroads, every town set cl…
What is the difference between weather and climate?Weather is what is happening now, today's rain or heat; climate is the long-term average over decades. Weather is your m…
What is the longest river in the world?Traditionally the Nile, at about 4,130 miles, but it is genuinely contested: many scientists argue the Amazon is longer,…
Why is it hotter at the equator?Because the equator faces the sun most directly, so sunlight hits concentrated on a small area. Near the poles the same …
What is the smallest country in the world?Vatican City, at about 0.17 square miles, smaller than many city parks and home to roughly 800 people. It is an independ…
Why does Australia have so many dangerous animals?Long isolation. Australia broke off from other continents around 100 million years ago, so its wildlife evolved separate…
What is the difference between a sea and an ocean?Oceans are the vast open bodies of saltwater; seas are smaller, usually partly enclosed by land, and often part of an oc…
Why does Greenland look so huge on maps?Map distortion. The common Mercator projection stretches areas near the poles, so Greenland looks as big as Africa when …
What is the most spoken language in the world?By total speakers, English leads at over 1.5 billion, most of them second-language learners. By native speakers, though,…
Why do heavy ships float but a small rock sinks?It is about density and displacement, not weight. A steel ship is hollow, so the whole thing averages out lighter than w…
How many continents are there?Depends where you went to school. English-speaking countries teach seven, much of Europe and Latin America teach six by …
What is the International Date Line?An imaginary line near 180 degrees longitude where the calendar date changes. Cross it westbound and you lose a day; eas…
Why is the Dead Sea so salty?Because water flows in and only leaves by evaporating, concentrating minerals for millennia. At roughly ten times ocean …
What is the deepest part of the ocean?Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, about 36,000 feet down. Everest would fit inside with more than a mile of water a…
What is the difference between latitude and longitude?Latitude lines run horizontally and measure north to south from the equator; longitude lines run vertically and measure …
Do rivers only flow south?No, and the belief is a map artifact. Rivers flow downhill, and direction on a map has nothing to do with it. The Nile f…