Q 01/05

According to a popular local translation, the name Cotopaxi means the 'neck' of which heavenly body?

A) The Sun

B) The Moon

C) The Pole Star

D) Jupiter

Answer · why

B) The Moon

The Moon gives the peak its name in a common reading that joins Quechua 'coto' (neck) with Aymara 'phakhsi', a nod to a crater shaped like a crescent.

Q 02/05

Cotopaxi's ice cap is one of the world's few glaciers lying almost directly on which line?

A) The Equator

B) The Tropic of Cancer

C) The Arctic Circle

D) The Prime Meridian

Answer · why

A) The Equator

The Equator passes less than one degree of latitude north of Cotopaxi, but the ice survives because it only begins about 5,000 m up the cone.

Q 03/05

Which Steven Spielberg film shows the lost cargo ship SS Cotopaxi stranded in the Gobi Desert?

A) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

B) Raiders of the Lost Ark

C) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

D) Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Answer · why

D) Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters of the Third Kind borrowed a real ship, named after the volcano, that vanished in 1925 on a coal run from Charleston to Havana.

Q 04/05

Cotopaxi's summit, at roughly 5,900 metres, is almost exactly as high as which other famous volcano?

A) Mount Rainier

B) Kilimanjaro

C) Mount Etna

D) Mauna Kea

Answer · why

B) Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro reaches 5,895 m, two metres short of Cotopaxi's usual figure of 5,897 m. Hans Meyer, the first to top the African giant, later climbed Cot...

Q 05/05

Cotopaxi's steep, near-symmetrical cone of layered lava and ash makes it which type of volcano?

A) Shield volcano

B) Cinder cone

C) Stratovolcano

D) Lava dome

Answer · why

C) Stratovolcano

Stratovolcano cones, also called composite volcanoes, are steeper than the broad shield volcanoes of Hawaii and are prone to explosive eruptions.