Geographical Allsorts Trivia Quiz

Answer: Continental Russia's borders (not counting islands) are continuous

Grab an atlas and have a close look between Lithuania and Poland. Sandwiched between them is a bit of Russia, completely cut off from the rest of the country. If your atlas is big enough, you might even catch the name: Kaliningrad Oblast, with the main city formerly being Koenigsberg, the capital of Prussia. Now only 0.2% of the population is ethnically German.

The continental plate containing Africa is indeed moving north; in a few million years, goodbye Mediterranean!

Ozone is great about 50km (30m) up, where it protects us from becoming toasted by the sun's ultra-violet rays, but woe betide you if you breathe the stuff in!

Less than half of the world's population was indeed urbanized in 2000, but not much less - 47%, in fact.

Answer: Granite cools inside the earth's crust, whereas basalt cools outside it

The terms given to granite and basalt are intrusive and extrusive respectively. The reason basalt cools outside the crust is that it has usually oozed or been chucked out of a volcano.

The ocean floor actually consists primarily of heavier basalt and the earth's crust is lighter granite - which they'd have to be, I guess, if the continental plates were to float.

Answer: The Carboniferous

The term refers specifically to the coal-rich areas of Britain and northern Europe, Asia, and midwestern and eastern North America.

Europe's predominance in the last couple of hundred years is due to the Industrial Revolution, which in turn wouldn't have been possible without the huge Carboniferous coal deposits laid down 354 to 290 million years ago, during the Paleozoic era. Given a different set of circumstances, Native Americans or (more likely) Chinese might have begun the industrial revolution, and be masters of the world today. As it happened, China came close: it was shutting down the last of its blast furnaces, perfected in the 11th century, at the same time that Abraham Darby was firing up his first ones, at the beginning of the 18th century.

Answer: No

They're separated by a chunk of Argentina, as well as by the Parana River.

Answer: Troposphere

The troposphere extends upwards about 14km from the earth's surface, and contains all our weather; the air in it moves in all directions. The tropopause separates it from the stratosphere, in which thin air moves mainly horizontally; this is succeeded by the mesosphere, then the ionosphere (in which auroras take place). Above this comes the exosphere, in which temperature increases with altitude.

If you answered 'bathysphere', look away now...

A bathysphere, according to http://www.fact-index.com/b/ba/bathysphere.html, 'is a spherical deep-sea diving submersible which is lowered into bodies of water with a cable.'

Answer: solid

The core consists of a solid, mainly iron, mass surrounded by liquid iron. Apparently the earth's core is spinning slightly faster than the earth itself, so that for every 400 earth turns, the core turns 401 times. The earth's magnetic field is produced in the outer, liquid core.

Answer: Mozambique

All the others are landlocked.

Answer: None of them are the largest cities in their respective countries

The largest cities are respectively New York, Auckland, Sydney, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Shanghai and Sao Paulo.

Answer: Reykjavik, Iceland

From north to south, the cities' north latitudes are: Reykjavik, Iceland at 64 degrees 09 minutes; Anchorage, Alaska at 61 13; Helsinki, Finland at 60 10; and Vladivostok, Russia at 40 09.

Answer: Japan

For the record, Japan's coastline is 29,751 km (18,486 m), that of the US is 19,924 km (11,999 m), New Zealand's is 15,134 km (9,404 m) and that of the British Isles (the UK plus the Republic of Ireland) is 13,877 km (8,623 m). (Figures from the CIA World Factbook.)