Answer 1:
0.30 time zones are actually quite common,
Newfoundland has one, also India,and South
Australia, and there are even some 0.20 time
zones, I believe Bhutanmay use one, also one of
the small Caribbean states of South America.
Ideally
local time is such that the sun is highest at
noon, and most countries try to make this as true
as possible. It happens that it's very nearly true
in Santa Barbara, because we're located almost
exactly at 120 degrees West, and that's exactly
where the sun is highest at noon in the Pacific
time zone. It would be true in the Mountain time
zone for anyone exactly at 105 West, and so on -
each of the 24 whole-hour time zones is 15 degrees
wide.
You could try that as a class experiment -
Is the sun directly south and highest at noon? And
what happens in the summer? Some places are so far
from the center of their timezone that the sun is
very far from highest at noon - an example is
Western China, which uses the same time as Beijing
- so try figuring out when the sun comes up and
goes down in Urumchi (do it for mid March or mid
September, when the sun comes up and goes down at
the same times, 6am and 6pm, everywhere in the
center of any time zone).
People in South Australia or
Newfoundland or India have simply argued that on
average people in those areas see the sun highest
nearer noon if they choose a non-whole-hour time
zone. Of course it's a pain for TV programming
(any Canadian is familiar with announcements like
"10 o'clock, 10.30 in Newfoundland"), and for
travelers from Melbourne to Adelaide("set your
watches back 30 minutes"). Click Here to return to the search form.
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