Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Which of the Great Lakes is entirely within US territory?

Answer: Lake Michigan

Some consider Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to be two lobes of the same lake. The Huron Lobe and the Michigan Lobe are at the same elevation and are connected by the 120-foot-deep Mackinac Strait, also at the same elevation. Lakes are separated from each other by streams and rivers.

The Strait of Mackinac is not a river. It is 3.6 to 5 miles wide, wider than most lakes are long. In essence, it is just a narrowing, not a separation of the two lobes of Lake Michigan-Huron.

2. Name one of two African lakes that are divided between four countries:

Answer: Lake Chad

Lake Chad straddles Chad, Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon. Lake Tanganyika straddles Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), Tanzania, and Zambia.

3. What lake is at the junction of the borders of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland?

Answer: Lake Constance

Lakes Zurich and Neuchatel are wholly within Switzerland. Lake Geneva straddles the Swiss-French border.

4. What Scottish body of water supposedly has a monster (or monsters) living in it?

Answer: Loch Ness

Hence the monster's nickname: Nessie.

5. What lake does the Panama Canal 'go through'?

Answer: Lake Gatun

It also 'goes through' Miraflores Lake.

6. What reservoir is formed behind the Hoover Dam?

Answer: Lake Mead

Lake Powell is formed by the Glen Canyon Dam on the other end of the Grand Canyon. Flaming Gorge is formed from the Green River in northern Utah. Grand Lake is the source of the Colorado River.

7. What lake is the source of the Nile (White Nile) River?

Answer: Lake Victoria

The first European to see Lake Victoria (originally called Ukerewe) was John Speke, the British explorer, in 1858. Speke believed it was the source of the Nile, but didn't prove it. Henry Stanley explored the region in 1875, thus proving it to be the White Nile's source. The Blue Nile flows from Lake Tana.

8. Which of these lakes does the Asian Jordan River flow into?

Answer: Dead Sea

The Dead Sea, with no outlets and a high evaporation rate, is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world. It supports no macroscopic life. However, small amounts of bacteria and microbial fungi exist in the brackish waters. Its shore is the lowest dry point on the Earth's surface
There is also a Jordan River in Utah.

9. What lake straddles the New York-Vermont border?

Answer: Lake Champlain

The lake, named for the explorer Samuel de Champlain, was the scene of battles in the French and Indian Wars and the American Revolution.

10. What are the long, thin, glacial lakes in central New York collectively called?

Answer: finger lakes

11. What lake straddles the California-Nevada border west of Carson City, NV?

Answer: Lake Tahoe

12. What is the largest lake in Manitoba, Canada?

Answer: Lake Winnipeg

13. What large lake (called a sea) straddles the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan?

Answer: Aral Sea

The Aral Sea has shrunk to half its former size since the Soviet Union started using its feeder rivers for irrigation.

14. What reservoir is formed behind the Aswan High Dam in Egypt?

Answer: Lake Nasser

15. What is the highest large lake in the world?

Answer: Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca's shore is at 12,500 ft. above sea level.