Ever wondered, why when it’s noon in New York, it’s already evening in London? It’s all about time zones!
Our planet, Earth, is constantly spinning, or rotating, on its axis. One full rotation takes about 24 hours, giving us a day and night cycle.
Because it’s rotating, the sun only shines directly overhead, creating “noon,” at one specific line of longitude at any given moment.
Imagine if everyone just set their clocks to their own local noon! Travel and communication would be a total mess. Noon in one town could be 12:00 PM, while just a few miles away, it’s 12:05 PM!
To bring order, we created time zones! These are regions that observe a uniform standard time.
The system starts with the Prime Meridian, an imaginary line at 0 degrees longitude, passing through Greenwich, England. From there, the Earth is divided into 24 sections, roughly 15 degrees of longitude wide, for each hour of the day.
As you travel east from the Prime Meridian, each time zone is one hour ahead. Go west, and you go back an hour.
So, time zones ensure that everyone’s “noon” aligns with the sun, making global travel, communication, and commerce possible! It’s a clever way to keep our world in sync, even when the sun isn’t!