Time Zones

As the Earth rotates on its axis, the Sun shines on only one part of the Earth at a time. While the sun shines where you live, it’s nighttime somewhere else.

When you’re eating your breakfast cereal, children in Paris are finishing the school day and children in Moscow are eating dinner. Children in Bangkok are going to bed and children in Sydney, Australia are getting up for the next day of school.

It wouldn’t make sense for us to be on the same time zone. Instead, countries all over the world are divided into time zones, based loosely on longitudinal bands. Large countries, such as the U.S. and Russia, may be divided into three or more time zones, but most countries fall in one zone.

credit: http://easyscienceforkids.com/all-about-the-time-zone/ 

Just because it’s 3 p.m. in New York doesn’t mean it’s that time in Los Angeles. In fact, it’s noon in L.A.

Why? 

 Time Zones... of course. It makes sense that most countries want to have a standard number of hours for daylight, no matter what part of the  country that you live in. 

Let’s say you go to school at 8 a.m. Is the Sun up? More than likely. But when the Sun comes up before 8 a.m. in New York, kids who go to school in California would have to go to school in the dark if they had to go at the same time as you do. 

Why? 

Everyone on the planet wants the sun to be at its highest point in the sky (crossing the meridian) at noon. If there were just one time zone, this would be impossible because the Earth rotates 15 degrees every hour. 

The idea behind multiple time zones is to divide the world into 24 15-degree slices and set the clocks accordingly in each zone. All of the people in a given zone set their clocks the same way, and each zone is one hour different from the next.

We didn’t always have time zones, though. For thousands of years, people didn’t even keep track of time at all, at least not in the way that we know. Sundials, water clocks, and other time pieces marked the passage of the Sun across the sky, but nobody was talking about seconds, minutes, or hours way back then.

A few hundred years ago, clocks and watches were invented and timekeeping became a focus for many people. But nobody really had an idea yet that time zones were needed.

It wasn’t until 1878 that it was proposed to divide the world into 24 time zones, each spaced a certain distance apart, according to measurements made on a globe. This arrangement was adopted by many countries. 

It divided the United States into four time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. 

American railroad companies helped by using the time zones for their train schedules. The railroad had exploded across the American landscape by this time, and the train companies wanted their trains to run on time. An agreement between the major companies was put forth in 1883. The agreement established an official time as well. Central Time and Mountain Time might differ by an hour, but they differed by exactly an hour.

Finally, in 1918, Congress passed the Standard Time Act, which made the four time zones official. The Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones were now enforced by federal law. Clocks were also set to a certain time on the minute hand as well. Before, time varied from place to place depending on what time people thought it was.     

The map dividing the U.S. into the four time zones doesn’t always go straight down state lines. Some states, for instance, are in two different time zones. Florida, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee are part of both the Eastern and Central time zones. Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas are part of both the Central and Mountain time zones. And Idaho and Oregon are part of both the Mountain and Pacific time zones.

So, as you take a trip through Tennessee, you might see clocks that say two different times. It just depends on whether you’re in eastern or western Tennessee. Why is this the case? Well, for one thing, not all the states had become states yet when the railroad companies started using their time zones in 1883. Not even by 1918 were all the states in the Union yet. Hawaii, the last of the 50 states, became a state in 1959. (Hawaii and Alaska are entirely different matters because they’re so far to the west. Hawaii is three hours behind California; Alaska is one hour behind.)

What does all this mean? It means that the more you travel in the United States, the more you’ll need to check your watch!

Video about Time Zones (3.11)

Watch The Zip Line Across Time Zones (2.02)

Just for fun check out what time it is in another country 

For fun: Video about Understanding Day Lights Savings Time (2.32)

Comment: What do you think of the idea of One Time Zone for the Whole World? (4.51)