Question

What degree of longitude does each time zone cover?

Answer 1

Hint: For legal, commercial, and social purposes, a time zone is a region that follows a consistent standard time. Because it is more practical for places in regular communication to retain the same time, time zones tend to follow the borders of nations and their subdivisions rather than rigidly following longitude.

Complete step by step solution:
Because of the Earth's spherical form, the apparent position of the Sun in the sky, and therefore solar time, changes with location. For every degree of longitude, this fluctuation equates to four minutes of time, thus while it is solar noon in London, it is roughly 10 minutes before solar noon in Bristol, which is about 2.5 degrees to the west. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the mean solar time at that place, was established in 1675 as a help to seafarers in determining longitude at sea, giving a common reference time while each site in England retained a separate time.
Every 24 hours, the Earth revolves on its axis, completing one full rotation. Our clocks also display these 24 hours. The majority of the time is divided between the hours of 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. When we want to utilise a standard time that is the same all throughout the globe, we use Greenwich Mean Time, also known as Universal Time. This is computed using a 24-hour clock. On the planet, there are 24 time zones. All clocks in the same time zone show the same time. Each east zone is one hour ahead of the next, while each west zone is one hour behind. Each hourly movement of the sun on the equinox approximates the shift from one time zone to the next.
The earth rotates$${360}^{\circ }$$ in about 24 hours.
$$\text{Rotation per hour = }{\displaystyle \frac{\text{360 degrees}}{\text{24 hours}}}$$
= 15 degrees per hour.
Each time zone covers 15 degrees of longitude.


Note:
Standard time zones are used by all nations for secular purposes, although not all of them follow the notion exactly as it was intended. A half-hour or quarter-hour variation from standard time is used by a number of nations and subdivisions. Some nations, like China and India, employ a single time zone despite the fact that their area significantly exceeds the optimum$${15}^{\circ }$$ of longitude for one hour; others, like Spain and Argentina, utilise normal hour-based offsets, although not necessarily those dictated by their physical position.