• Question: why is the british timezone so different to the americans

    Asked by anon-206161 to Hannah on 8 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Hannah Collingwood

      Hannah Collingwood answered on 8 Mar 2019:

      People like to use the sun to mark the passage of time. We wake up in the mornings (maybe 6am when the sun is just starting to rise), have lunch at about 12pm when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, and then go to bed in the evenings (maybe 9pm when the sun has set). Because the Earth rotates, the sun looks different to people in the UK and the USA at any point in time: the sun might be just starting to rise in the USA while anyone in the UK would be thinking about having lunch.

      To get around this, time zones were introduced. This means that the sun looks much the same for everyone in any time zone – for each time zone, it’s always about 12pm when then sun is at the highest point in the sky, no matter which time zone you live in.

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