1Earth’s Grand Rotation
Imagine Earth is a giant spinning basketball. Because the sun can only shine on one side at a time, we divide our planet into 24 vertical slices called time zones. Since a circle has 360 degrees, Earth rotates exactly 15 degrees every hour! This is why when you are eating breakfast in New York, your friends in London are already finishing their lunch. Without these zones, the sun would be setting at noon in some places and rising at midnight in others, which would be very confusing for everyone!
2Odd Clocks and Giant Countries
While most time zones change by exactly one hour, some places like to be different! Countries like India and Nepal use "fractional" time zones, meaning their clocks are 30 or 45 minutes off from their neighbors. Even weirder is China; it is roughly the same size as the continental United States, but instead of having five different time zones, the whole country follows just one. This means in western China, the sun might not rise until 10:00 AM, even though the clocks say it is morning!
3The Magic of the Date Line
There is a special place in the Pacific Ocean called the International Date Line. If you cross it going west, you actually jump forward into tomorrow! Because of this "time travel" trick, people can celebrate New Year’s Eve in one country, hop on a quick flight across the line, and celebrate the exact same New Year all over again in a different time zone. It is the ultimate way to see the world like a time traveler, moving between yesterday and today in just a few minutes.
