Time Zones

In class we looked at the difference between longitude and latitude, and started to look at different time zones. A time zone is a region of the globe that observes a uniform standard of time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. Time zones typically align with the boundaries of countries or states because it's convenient for areas in close commercial communication to follow the same time. Each band of longitude (meridians, not parallels) is a different time zone.
More on longitude, it is the geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. The lines run in a north-south direction, and measure how far away a point is from the prime meridian, which crosses through Greenwich, England, and is given the position of 0 degrees longitude. The lines of longitude cross the equator at right angles, are all equal in length, and meet at the north and south poles. The lines are closest to one another towards the poles, and farthest away from each other at the equator.
We then went into Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC. It's called UTC because it's universal, and some languages, like French, put adjectives after nouns in stead of in front, like we do in English.
UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT, is a synonym for UTC, but predates it by nearly 300 years.

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