4 ms·
"The coordination problem is impossibly large and annoying." Therefore, here's an impossibly large and annoying solution, demonstrating that fact. Most things
by pwinnski 4y ago
"The coordination problem is impossibly large and annoying." Therefore, here's an impossibly large and annoying solution, demonstrating that fact.
Most things work in lock-step with other things, so even though business already have limitless ability to set their own hours, they tend to set very, very similar hours because there's no point in being closed when people expect you to be open, and not much point in being open when people expect you to be closed.
"But because noon is when the sun is highest, most people can look at the light quality outside and know immediately what time of day it is."
Where, exactly, is noon when the sun is highest? Chicago, Illinois, and Regina, Saskatchewan, are in the same time zone. When the clock ticks noon, is that the apex for both of them? Or to avoid crossing international borders, is the sun at the highest for both Indianapolis, Indiana, and Bangor, Maine?
Bangor today had a sunrise at 05:55, and expects sunset at at 17:35. Indianapolis, on the other hand, had sunrise at 07:02, and expects sunset at 18:47. They are in the same time zone, and yet solar events are more than an hour different. Today, "solar noon" is 11:45 in Bangor, but 12:54 in Indianapolis. Adjusting Indianapolis back an hour to bring noon closer to solar noon would put it at 10:45 in Bangor!
"The sun is highest in the sky in the middle of the day" is approximately true, but can be off by more than the one-hour adjustment for Daylight Saving Time, so it is clearly not precisely true, whether we shift by an hour or not.
The continental USA is 2800 miles wide, and even splitting it into four time zones doesn't make things make good sense for every location. But hey, it could be worse: China is more than 3100 miles wide, and uses a single time zone!
* This isn't aimed at you, but I always check this when comparing two cities, because it's fun: Indianapolis gets between 9:21 and 14:59 hours of daylight, December to June, while Bangor gets from 8:48 to 15:35 hours of daylight.