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Physical Geography — Landforms and Plate Tectonics — High School World Geography practice questions

10 multiple-choice questions on Physical Geography — Landforms and Plate Tectonics, about 6% of the High School World Geography bank. Every one carries a written rationale.

Written and maintained by the CoStudy team · last updated 2026-09-29 · how we write and review questions

What this chapter covers

Physical Geography — Landforms and Plate Tectonics is one of 16 chapters in CoStudy's High School World Geography bank, and it holds 10 of the bank's 170 multiple-choice questions — roughly 6% of the total. That proportion is not arbitrary: chapters follow the certifying body's published exam outline, and the number of questions in each is set by that domain's published weight, so the share of your practice time this chapter takes matches the share of the real exam it accounts for.

Studying by chapter is worth doing once you have a diagnostic score. A single overall percentage tells you whether you are close; it does not tell you which domain is dragging. Working a weak chapter in isolation, and re-testing it in isolation, is the fastest way to move a score that has stalled — and it is why the mock exams in CoStudy report by domain rather than as one number.

Free Physical Geography — Landforms and Plate Tectonics practice questions

5 questions drawn from this chapter, with the full rationale shown — the controlling principle behind the right answer, and why each wrong option tempts and fails.

The Great Rift Valley in East Africa is an example of which tectonic process?

  1. Continental collision
  2. Transform faulting
  3. Ocean-continent subduction
  4. Continental rifting (divergence)

Answer: D — Continental rifting (divergence)

East Africa is splitting apart along a divergent boundary. A is the Himalayan pattern — direction reversal (collision vs rifting).

The theory of plate tectonics states that Earth's outer shell is broken into:

  1. Rigid lithospheric plates that move over the asthenosphere
  2. Two hemispheres that rotate independently
  3. Continental crust plates only, floating on oceanic crust
  4. A single crust divided by mid-ocean ridges but not otherwise moving

Answer: A — Rigid lithospheric plates that move over the asthenosphere

Plates = lithosphere riding on the plastic asthenosphere. C is a classic misconception — both continental and oceanic crust ride on the same plates.

The Himalayan mountain range is the result of:

  1. A continent-continent convergent boundary (India colliding with Eurasia)
  2. A hotspot under central Asia
  3. A transform boundary sliding past Tibet
  4. A rift valley between two diverging plates

Answer: A — A continent-continent convergent boundary (India colliding with Eurasia)

India's ongoing collision with Eurasia continues to uplift the Himalayas. D describes East Africa; C confuses transform (like San Andreas) with convergent.

Which landform is created by wind erosion in an arid environment?

  1. Moraine
  2. Fjord
  3. Delta
  4. Yardang

Answer: D — Yardang

Yardangs are wind-carved ridges. Moraines (A) are glacial, deltas (C) are river-mouth, fjords (D) are glacial-marine — different agents entirely.

Which of these processes is a form of chemical weathering?

  1. Frost wedging
  2. Wind abrasion
  3. Carbonation dissolving limestone
  4. Root pry-apart in cracks

Answer: C — Carbonation dissolving limestone

Carbonation (rainwater + CO2 dissolving CaCO3) is chemical. A, B, and D are all mechanical/physical weathering — a classic classification trap.

Practise the full chapter

These are a sample. The full Physical Geography — Landforms and Plate Tectonics chapter runs 10 items with per-chapter progress tracking, on the web and in the iOS app.

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