Question
Question: If it is noon at one location on Earth, what time is it at a location directly on the other side of ...
If it is noon at one location on Earth, what time is it at a location directly on the other side of Earth?
Solution
For legal, commercial, and social purposes, a time zone is a region that follows a consistent standard time. Because it is more practical for places in regular communication to retain the same time, time zones tend to follow the borders of nations and their subdivisions rather than rigidly following longitude.
Complete step by step solution:
Every 60 minutes, the Earth spins on its axis by roughly 15 degrees. It has completed a full 360-degree revolution after 24 hours. This information was used to split the world into 24 parts, or time zones. Each time zone is separated by 15 degrees of longitude. At the equator, the distance between zones is largest. The curvature of the Earth causes it to decrease to zero at the poles. The distance between time zones at the equator is about 1,038 miles due to the equator's length of 24,902 miles. The imaginary dividing lines start at Greenwich, a London neighbourhood. The prime meridian is the major dividing line of longitude. The angular distance between any point on any meridian and the prime meridian at Greenwich is known as longitude. Greenwich Mean Time is the time at Greenwich (GMT). Every 15-degree segment or time zone west of Greenwich is an hour sooner than GMT, whereas each time zone east of Greenwich is an hour later.
If one point on Earth is noon, another position on the other half of the Earth is midnight.
Note: Because of the Earth's spherical form, the apparent position of the Sun in the sky, and therefore solar time, changes with location. For every degree of longitude, this fluctuation equates to four minutes of time, thus while it is solar noon in London, it is roughly 10 minutes before solar noon in Bristol, which is about 2.5 degrees to the west. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the mean solar time at that place, was established in 1675 as a help to seafarers in determining longitude at sea, giving a common reference time while each site in England retained a separate time.