what is a time zone?

Answer 1

Time zones are areas of the Earth that have adopted the same standard time, usually referred to as the local time. Formerly, people used local solar time (originally apparent and then mean solar time), resulting in time differing slightly from town to town. As telecommunications improved and with the expansion of the railways this became increasingly awkward. Time zones partially rectified the problem by setting the clocks of a region to the same mean solar time. ...

Answer 2

Since the earth is round, different places on the earth's surface have different times. In one place the sun may be rising, in another it is setting. Each degree east or west you go, the time changes by four minutes. Instead of having to adjust your watch every time you drive to the shops, the world is divided into time zones. Everywhere in the time zone uses the same time, even though it is not exactly correct for anywhere except one line down the middle of the time zone. You only have to change your watch when you cross into the next time zone, and it is usually a change of an hour, which is easy enough to cope with.

Some places in the world such as Afghanistan use time zones that are 30 minutes different from the ones around them.

Answer 3

Good info above, one more thing you should know. Each multiple of 15 degrees longitude is used as a central meridian and time zones extend 7 1/2 degrees on each side of it. The central meridians are the ones that most globes and maps choose to mark. The problem is that this divides states and countries at times using a meridian as the divider, so individual states and countries may choose to place their citizens all in one time zone, or create a new 1/2 hour time zone for themselves.

Central meridians: 0, 15,30,45,60,75,90,105,120,135,150,165,180

Answer 4

a time zone is used to equal out areas since the sun will set earlier in a location, for instance new york, if there were no time zones the sun would set at 3:00! this is why we have time zones.also when advetizing you'll notice sumtimes it'll say e/p which means eastern and pacific which means every where in the U.S.It's not just in the U.S.It's for the whole world