Odd Timezones

humanji

This site: The World Clock lists a load of cities and their time zones. Now, it's confused me. Different timezones have different hours, but the minutes stay the same. But some cities (Adelaide,New Delhi,Yangon etc) are 30 minutes behind, while Chatham Island is 15 minutes behind.

How is this possible? I had a rough night last night, and the concept of this hurts my brain

haunted-room

humanji wrote:

This site: The World Clock lists a load of cities and their time zones. Now, it's confused me. Different timezones have different hours, but the minutes stay the same. But some cities (Adelaide,New Delhi,Yangon etc) are 30 minutes behind, while Chatham Island is 15 minutes behind.

How is this possible? I had a rough night last night, and the concept of this hurts my brain

I never knew about that, 15 mins behind!? WTF? whos stupid idea was that? lol

Gordon

http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/4380

Feral Mutant

humanji wrote:

How is this possible? I had a rough night last night, and the concept of this hurts my brain

If you think your brain hurts now, think about this; what time is it at the north pole?

JohnCleary

Feral Mutant wrote:

If you think your brain hurts now, think about this; what time is it at the north pole?

OUCH!

Thirdfox

Special region - a timezone in itself I believe (same applies for the South Pole)

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Aren't the North/South Poles +12GMT/UTC? I'm too lazy to Google it...

ambrose :cool:

Black Swan

Blue looks at computer clock. "It's 9.02 AM in OC So Cal." What a minute. The clock just changed. "It's 9.03AM now."

kevmy

haunted-room wrote:

I never knew about that, 15 mins behind!? WTF? whos stupid idea was that? lol

It's no ones idea thats just the way the world and science work. Strictly speaking only places that are 15 degrees away from Grennwhich are an hour ahead or behind. The rest are done in minutes. If your looking for proof ask a mate in Galway to tell you in Dublin when the sun is going down, it will be at a slightly different time to you (a matter of mins). If we were all an hour behind Europe then the sun would set at the same time.
We just put countries an hour ahead or behind for convineince. Up until ~120 yrs ago Galway and Cork and other places had diff times from Dublin.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Re: New Delhi
India are half an hour ahead of Pakistan because they decided they didn't want to be in the same zone.
So what time is it in Kashmir?

Adam

From Gordon's link:

Apparently, the Chathams are the first inhabited landmasses to see the sunrise of each new day, if you go by time.

Or, at least they were, until 1995, when the Republic of Kiribati went where New Zealand wouldn’t go, and resolved their International Date Line problem by taking the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands to UTC+13 and UTC+14, respectively. Since these Islands were at UTC-10 and UTC-11, they did it by skipping December 31st, 1994 entirely. That date technically never occurred on those islands.

Mental or what?!

"Eh, sorry folks, we won't be celebratin' New Year this year, eh, not really sure why, but I'll be fooked if we're gonna sit in the same time zone as the feckin Kiwis!"

:rolleyes:

Rb

Adelaide is half an hour behind Sydney, as is Darwin...I never knew that.

Oh well.

iFight

Saw that on the clock on my iPod a while ago, thought it was wrong. Is pretty weird

Rb

Kathmandu is five hours and forty five minutes ahead of us...how odd.

bluto63

Timezones are confusing. Iceland is the same time as us yet they're a good distance to the west.
Then there's countries even further apart that have the same time, it's mad!

It's a difficult topic, because the only reason Spain isn't the same timezone as us(which geographically it should) is because it's connected to mainland Europe which generally needs to keep the same time. It would be weird travelling a kilometre and being an hour ahead/behind than you just were.

Then there's the large countries with several timezones in them(eg Russia). That must be confusing...

JohnCleary

I'll never forget when I was about 10, on flight to Tenerife for my first holiday abroad.....

Some d1ckwad (a male adult) turned around to me on the plane in an intimidating voice asked "What's time will it be in Tenerife when we arrive, I need to set my watch"

Oh well my face lit up... "It'll be the same time as in Ireland, we're going directly south, smelly-breath" ... I'll never forget the roar of laugher from a few people around me. I was really on the high throne for the rest of the flight

Lust4Life

Time zones DO boggle the mind.
I'm six hours behind you all being from Wisconsin.
And lately I've been talking to someone in Australia which really throws a wrench into the time zone consideration!:p

Ruu_Old

Indiana is neighbouring Illinois and some of the counties there are an hour behind Illinois time but some aren't (I think).

Thirdfox

China has one timezone - BST Beijing Standard Time - despite being quite a huge landmass

sceptre

JohnCleary wrote:

I'll never forget when I was about 10, on flight to Tenerife for my first holiday abroad.....

Some d1ckwad (a male adult) turned around to me on the plane in an intimidating voice asked "What's time will it be in Tenerife when we arrive, I need to set my watch"

Oh well my face lit up... "It'll be the same time as in Ireland, we're going directly south, smelly-breath" ... I'll never forget the roar of laugher from a few people around me. I was really on the high throne for the rest of the flight

Of course you go directly south to Spain too which is on a different time zone (and in fact you go south-west to Tenerife rather than directly south). Geographical placement of the Tenerife and all the Canary Is would place it an hour behind (Tenerife is a solid 15+ degrees west of Greenwich), they just happen to have chosen to be the same as us.

Rabies

Lust4Life wrote:

Time zones DO boggle the mind.
I'm six hours behind you all being from Wisconsin.
And lately I've been talking to someone in Australia which really throws a wrench into the time zone consideration!:p

I'm 11hrs ahead of everyone here in New Zealand. Easy to forget at times.

kevmy

Ruu wrote:

Indiana is neighbouring Illinois and some of the counties there are an hour behind Illinois time but some aren't (I think).

Wasn't there something like that in the West Wing one time where they where in one county which had a different time zone to the ones either side of it. Now thats weird

Thirdfox

7 hours difference here in Beijing...