All about Time Zones in the New Year

Ours is a family that travels quite a bit. Hence, the kids know that places that are considerably far from each other can have different times, at the same time (that’s how they like to put it). But how and why? They seem to be a bit puzzled about this and hence I decided to begin the New Year by giving them a very basic explanation for the same, till they are old enough to learn in detail about time zones tending to follow the boundaries of countries and subcontinents and so on. Here goes.

“World” by qimono is licensed under CC by 2.0

Once upon a time long ago, the people on the earth believed that our planet was flat. They assumed that our earth was like a log floating in water (the oceans and the seas) and every place on earth had the same clock and the same time. But then, as science progressed, we came to know that the earth was indeed spherical – that is how we have day and night one after the other, because the round earth rotates on its axis (a globe and a torch for demonstration would work here). This way the sun shines only on one half of the earth at a time. And so, it couldn’t be possible for every place on earth to have the same time – after all, it would be breakfast time in one country and bedtime for a country that is right on the opposite side of the globe!

Then came along a couple of scientists who did the smart thing – they divided up our planet into 24 different time zones – same as there are 24 hours to a day. Now what if the entire earth had just one time zone, as was thought to be the case earlier? Well, afternoon would then not have meant the same thing for people living in London, Dubai or India – it could mean morning for some, evening for others and the middle of the night for someone else!