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Class 6 Social Science: Oceans and Continents, 8 practice questions with answers

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These are 8 practice questions on the second chapter of the new NCERT Class 6 Social Science textbook, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, called Oceans and Continents. Each has a short answer and the textbook page it comes from. They cover how much of the Earth is water, salt and fresh water, the sizes of the oceans, ways of counting continents, life in the oceans, rain and disasters from the sea, an Earth without oceans, and how people have used the seas. For the Earth and its place in space, see our Class 6 Beyond Earth guide. Try each question before you read the answer.

These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every fact was checked against the page it cites by a test script, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

What the chapter says you need

Facts from the NCERT textbook (Exploring Society: India and Beyond, Grade 6, Chapter 2, printed pages 27 to 40):

Water and land

Question 1. Imagine the Earth's surface divided into 100 equal parts. (a) About how many parts would be water and how many land? (b) Why did early astronauts call the Earth the "blue planet"?

Answer: (a) about 75 water and about 25 land (a little more than 25); (b) because seen from space it looks mostly blue. (a) Water covers almost three-fourths of the Earth's surface, and three-fourths of 100 is 75; land covers a little over one-fourth, which is a little more than 25 parts. (b) With so much of the surface covered by water, the Earth seen from outer space looks mostly blue. (Water and land, page 28.)

Question 2. Is the water in each of these salty or fresh? (a) The Pacific Ocean. (b) A glacier. (c) Groundwater. (d) A river. (e) The Arabian Sea.

Answer: salty: (a) and (e); fresh: (b), (c) and (d). The oceans and their seas hold most of the Earth's water, and that water is salty, unfit for most land animals, including humans, to drink. The Arabian Sea is a part of the Indian Ocean. Freshwater is a very small share of the planet's water, found in glaciers, rivers, lakes, the atmosphere and underground (groundwater). (Salt water and fresh water, page 31; the Arabian Sea, page 33.)

Oceans and continents

Question 3. Arrange the five oceans from the smallest to the largest.

Answer: Arctic, Southern, Indian, Atlantic, Pacific. The chapter gives the order from largest to smallest as Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic, so the smallest is the Arctic Ocean and the largest the Pacific. (The five oceans, page 32.)

Question 4. A friend counts five continents: Africa, America, Antarctica, Australia and Eurasia. Compared with the usual count of seven, which continents has the friend joined together?

Answer: North America with South America, and Europe with Asia. The usual seven are Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. The friend's "America" joins North and South America into one landmass, and "Eurasia" joins Europe and Asia, which form a single landmass on the map; that turns seven into five. Continents can be counted as four, five, six or seven, depending on which landmasses are joined. (Counting continents, pages 34 and 35.)

Question 5. (a) What do the words marine flora and marine fauna mean? Give two examples of each from the chapter. (b) Is ocean life found only near the surface?

Answer: (a) the plant life and the animal life of the seas, such as algae and seaweeds, and fish and whales; (b) no, every part of the ocean has its own life. (a) Marine means of the oceans and seas; flora is plant life and fauna is animal life. The ocean's plants include tiny algae and many kinds of seaweed; its animals include thousands of kinds of brightly coloured fish, dolphins and whales. (b) No: from the sunny surface right down to the dark depths, each part of the ocean has its own varied forms of life, including strange deep-sea creatures. (Oceans, page 31.)

Oceans and life

Question 6. (a) How do the oceans help farmers in India? (b) What usually causes a tsunami?

Answer: (a) the monsoon rains come from the ocean; (b) a powerful earthquake, or a volcano erupting, under the sea. (a) Clouds formed over the oceans bring rain to the land; the monsoon rains India expects every summer begin in the ocean, and without them agriculture and all life would suffer. (b) A tsunami is a giant wave, usually set off by a powerful earthquake or an erupting volcano on the sea floor; it can travel thousands of kilometres and flood coastal areas. (Oceans and disasters, page 33.)

Question 7. Imagine the Earth with no oceans at all. According to the chapter, what would happen to rainfall, and what would the land become?

Answer: there would be no rain, and the Earth would be a desert. Rain over the land comes from the oceans, as one step in the water cycle of our planet. Without the oceans that rain would never come, so there would be no rainfall at all and the whole Earth would turn into a desert. (Oceans and life, pages 37 and 38.)

Question 8. Give three ways in which people have used the oceans and seas since early times.

Answer: for example, to move to other lands, to trade goods, and to catch fish for food. From early times people have crossed the oceans and seas to settle in new regions, to trade every kind of goods, and to fight military campaigns, and they have fished in them for food. The sea has also shaped the cultures of coastal peoples, almost all of whom have stories and legends about it. (Oceans and life, page 38.)

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Sources

All opened and read on 2 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook; printed page = PDF page + 26 for this chapter.

The facts are from the textbook pages above. The questions, answers and checks are our own. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and the textbook.