Since different parts of Earth enter and exit daylight at different times, we need different time zones. Noon would be the middle of the day in some places, but it would be morning, evening, and the middle of the night in others. Imagine if the entire Earth had a single time zone. When your location rotates out of sunlight, you see the sun set. As your location on Earth rotates into sunlight, you see the sun rise. As Earth rotates, different parts of Earth receive sunlight or darkness, giving us day and night. Every 24 hours, the Earth makes a complete rotation. You know our planet is a sphere that spins on an imaginary pole called its axis. To understand time zones, start by thinking about the shape of the Earth. How is that possible? Is it time travel? Of course not! They just live in a different time zone. What time is it where you are? Have you ever traveled to another place and experienced a time change? Maybe you know someone who lives far away and is a few hours ahead of you. Hawaii is three hours behind California Alaska is one hour behind.Quick, find the nearest clock. (Hawaii and Alaska are entirely different matters because they’re so far to the west. Hawaii, the last of the 50 states, became a state in 1959. Not even by 1918 were all the states in the Union yet. 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. It just depends on whether you’re in eastern or western Tennessee. So, as you take a trip through Tennessee, you might see clocks that say two different times. And Idaho and Oregon are part of both the Mountain and Pacific time zones. Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas are part of both the Central and Mountain time zones. Florida, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee are part of both the Eastern and Central time zones. Some states, for instance, are in two different time zones. into the four time zones doesn’t always go straight down state lines. Before, time varied from place to place depending on what time people thought it was. Clocks were also set to a certain time on the minute hand as well. The Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones were now enforced by federal law. Central Time and Mountain Time might differ by an hour, but they differed by exactly an hour.įinally, in 1918, Congress passed the Standard Time Act, which made the four time zones official. The agreement established an official time as well. An agreement between the major companies was put forth in 1883. The railroad had exploded across the American landscape by this time, and the train companies wanted their trains to run on time. You already know that Pacific is three hours behind Eastern.Īmerican railroad companies helped by using the time zones for their train schedules. Mountain is one hour behind Central and two hours behind Eastern. Each time zone as you go west is one more hour behind. It divided the United States into four time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. This arrangement was adopted by many countries. It wasn’t until 1878 that man named Sanford Fleming (who was born in Scotland but moved to Canada) proposed dividing the world into 24 time zones, each spaced a certain distance apart, according to measurements made on a globe. But nobody really had an idea yet that time zones were needed. 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.Ī few hundred years ago, clocks and watches were invented and timekeeping became a focus for many people. For thousands of years, people didn’t even keep track of time at all, at least not in the way that we know. We didn’t always have time zones, though. The same is true of business and other parts of life. and also have sunlight to greet those schoolkids. in New York, California schools can have kids show up for school at 8 a.m. Parts of the earth are pointed toward the Sun for half of the day and then the other parts of the earth are pointed toward the Sun for the other half of the day.
NORTH AMERICA TIME ZONES FULL
Each day, the earth completes one full turn. Why? Because the earth turns, that’s why. 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.
It’s the law because most countries want to have a standard number of hours for daylight, no matter where in the country you live. It’s the law in the United States and in most countries in the world.
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