Which is the correct sequence of the following lakes in descending order of their size?
- (a)Victoria, Superior, Chilka, Michigan
- (b)Superior, Victoria, Michigan, Chilka
- (c)Michigan, Superior, Victoria, Chilka
- (d)Chilka, Michigan, Superior, Victoria
Correct — B, Superior, Victoria, Michigan, Chilka.
Rank these four by surface area and the gaps are wide. Lake Superior covers about 82,100 km², Lake Victoria about 68,800 km², Lake Michigan about 58,000 km², and Chilika only around 1,100 km².
That yields Superior, Victoria, Michigan, Chilka without needing exact figures. Rough magnitudes are enough, because no two of these lakes are close in area.
The idea to carry away: Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, and Victoria — Africa's largest — comes next, ahead of Michigan.
- (a)Victoria, Superior, Chilka, Michigan — This lifts Victoria above Superior, and it also drops Michigan below Chilika, a lagoon about fifty times smaller.
Victoria heads a different list — it is Africa's largest lake — but on world surface area it sits second among freshwater lakes, behind Superior by roughly 13,000 km².
A sequence that ends with a 58,000 km² Great Lake below a 1,100 km² lagoon can be rejected on the last pair alone.
- (c)Michigan, Superior, Victoria, Chilka — Only Chilika's fourth place is right. Michigan cannot lead, and Victoria belongs second, not third. At about 58,000 km² it is the smallest of the three big lakes named here.
Michigan is the correct answer to which of the five Great Lakes lies entirely within the United States, bordered by Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.
That distinction is about which country holds the water, not about how much surface it covers.
- (d)Chilka, Michigan, Superior, Victoria — This opens with the smallest, which is the opposite of the descending order the stem asks for.
Even read as an ascending list it still fails, because it puts Superior before Victoria when Superior is the larger of the pair.
Chilika belongs at the head of an Indian list — it is India's largest coastal lagoon — but on a world scale it is the smallest item in this set.
In a lake-ranking question, "size" is normally surface area: the spread of water on the map, not the depth or the volume of water held.
Those three measures rank lakes differently. Baikal is modest in area yet holds the greatest volume of fresh water of any lake, while Superior leads the freshwater lakes on area.
The four names span two very different scales — three of the world's great lakes and one Indian coastal lagoon. Once you see that Chilika is smaller than the other three by a factor of fifty or more, fourth place is settled and only the top three need ordering.
Only Victoria lies on another continent and in another drainage basin (the Nile); Superior and Michigan are both North American and both drain through the Great Lakes chain to the St Lawrence, so the item checks whether rough lake areas outside India are held as firmly as those inside it.
- Lake Superior covers about 82,100 km² and is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area; it is shared by the United States and Canada.
- Lake Victoria covers about 68,800 km², is Africa's largest lake, is bordered by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, and feeds the White Nile.
- Lake Michigan covers about 58,000 km² and is the one Great Lake lying entirely within the United States.
- Chilika is a brackish coastal lagoon in Odisha, separated from the Bay of Bengal by a sand bar.
- Chilika's area shifts with the season, roughly between 900 km² in summer and 1,165 km² after the monsoon.
- Chilika was designated a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention in 1981.
- The Caspian Sea, about 371,000 km², is the largest lake on Earth by area, but its water is saline.
- Lake Baikal in Siberia holds the greatest volume of fresh water of any lake, though its surface area is about 31,700 km².
Areas in descending order; the keyed sequence is Superior, Victoria, Michigan, Chilka.
- Reading "descending" as smallest first — the sequence must open with the largest item.
- Switching the measure midway: by water volume these three big lakes run Superior, Michigan, Victoria, which is not the area order.
- Assuming a continent's largest lake outranks lakes elsewhere; Victoria leads Africa yet trails Superior by roughly 13,000 km².
- Treating Chilika's area as a fixed figure when it expands after the monsoon and contracts in summer.
- Letting familiarity stand in for size — Chilika is prominent in Indian geography but is the smallest item in this set.
Sequencing named items by a measurable quantity is a standard device: the names are supplied and you order them, so partial knowledge still pays. Fixing one end of the sequence can knock out several options at once.
Here, knowing only that Chilika is last removes options (a) and (d); deciding Superior over Michigan for first place settles the rest.
The same content also appears as a single-best question ("which lake has the largest area"), as a lake-to-country or lake-to-state pairing, and as a matching set linking water bodies to type — freshwater, brackish or saline.
UPSC_2003_GS1_Q782003Same task and same option design: four named physical features to be placed in descending order, with the options spelling the names out instead of using numbered codes. What differs is the quantity and the canvas — river lengths within peninsular India there, lake surface areas across three continents plus one Indian lagoon here.
UPSC_2002_GS1_Q972002Same descending-order device applied to a global set, and like ours it rewards fixing one end of the sequence first. It differs in the unit and the format: population of countries, ordered through numbered codes, rather than lake area with names printed in the options.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following lakes has the largest surface area?
- (a)Lake Michigan
- (b)Lake Victoria
- (c)Lake Superior
- (d)Lake Baikal
Answerc — Lake Superior, at about 82,100 km², is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area.Victoria is about 68,800 km² and Michigan about 58,000 km², so both fall short. Baikal, about 31,700 km², leads on depth and on volume of fresh water, but the question names area.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is a brackish-water coastal lagoon?
- (a)Wular Lake
- (b)Loktak Lake
- (c)Chilika Lake
- (d)Kolleru Lake
Answerc — Chilika, on the Odisha coast, is cut off from the Bay of Bengal by a sand bar and mixes river water with seawater, which makes it brackish.Wular in Jammu and Kashmir is a freshwater lake fed by the Jhelum. Loktak in Manipur is freshwater, known for its floating phumdis. Kolleru in Andhra Pradesh is a freshwater lake lying between the Krishna and Godavari deltas.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the five Great Lakes of North America lies entirely within the United States?
- (a)Lake Superior
- (b)Lake Huron
- (c)Lake Michigan
- (d)Lake Erie
Answerc — Lake Michigan lies wholly inside the United States, with shores in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.Superior, Huron and Erie are each split between the United States and Canada, the international boundary running through their waters.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is the correct sequence of Lake Baikal, the Caspian Sea, Lake Superior and Lake Victoria in descending order of their surface area?
- (a)Caspian Sea, Superior, Victoria, Baikal
- (b)Superior, Caspian Sea, Victoria, Baikal
- (c)Caspian Sea, Victoria, Superior, Baikal
- (d)Superior, Victoria, Caspian Sea, Baikal
Answera — The Caspian Sea, about 371,000 km², is larger in area than any other lake, and Baikal, about 31,700 km², is the smallest of these four.Between them, Superior at about 82,100 km² outranks Victoria at about 68,800 km².
Options (b) and (d) demote the Caspian below a Great Lake, and (c) reverses Superior and Victoria.