--- title: Time zones and the date line — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Time zones and the date line», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The Earth turns 360 degrees in 24 hours, 15 degrees an hour, so noon slides westwards around the planet like a spotlight. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Time zones and the date line # Time zones and the date line Lesson 4 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/0/) — The Earth turns 360 degrees in 24 hours, 15 degrees an hour, so noon slides westwards around the planet like a spotlight. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/1/) — In 1337, when EU5 starts, every town simply kept its own sun time, and nobody minded because no horse or ship was fast enough for a few minutes to matter. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/2/) — Trains changed that: a timetable needs one clock, so British railways took London time in the 1840s, and the world later split into time zones counted from UTC. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/3/) — Somewhere the days must change, and that seam is the International Date Line in the Pacific: cross it westwards and you jump a whole day ahead. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/4/) — Magellan's crew, brought home by Elcano in 1522, found their log one day behind the date in Spain, because they had sailed westwards round the world with the Sun. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/5/) — The Earth turns 360 degrees in 24 hours, so it turns 15 degrees of longitude every hour, which is the basic width of a time zone; one degree takes 4 minutes, so a town 2 or 3 degrees west of another sees noon about 10 minutes later. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/6/) — The world sets its clocks from Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, and the UK uses Greenwich Mean Time (equal to UTC) in winter and British Summer Time, one hour ahead, in summer. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/7/) — Before railways each town kept its own local time from the Sun, and British railways began using London time in the 1840s, with the law following in 1880. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/8/) — The 48 neighbouring US states use four main time zones, Eastern (with New York), Central, Mountain and Pacific (with Los Angeles), each one hour behind the last, so Los Angeles is 3 hours behind New York, and Alaska and Hawaii have their own. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/9/) — China uses a single time zone, UTC+8, for the whole country, even though it is about as wide as five standard zones; the clock follows Beijing in the east, so in the far west the Sun rises very late by the clock. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/10/) — Not all time zones differ by whole hours, and India uses UTC+5:30 while Nepal uses UTC+5:45. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/11/) — The International Date Line runs mostly along 180 degrees longitude through the Pacific, zigzagging round island groups, and crossing it westwards you jump forward one calendar day. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/12/) — Kiribati moved the date line in 1995 so all its islands share the same date, and its Line Islands at UTC+14 are among the first places on Earth to start each new day. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/13/) — Samoa jumped to the west side of the date line by skipping Friday 30 December 2011 entirely, so it now has the same date as its big trading partners Australia and New Zealand instead of being a day behind. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/15/) — Many countries move their clocks forward an hour in summer, and the UK changes on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October; near the equator days and nights stay about 12 hours long all year, so most countries there never change their clocks. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/16/) — France uses 12 time zones, more than any other country, if its overseas territories are counted. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/17/) — In the EU5 period there were no time zones at all; each place kept its own sun time. - ← previous: [Projections: why Greenland looks huge](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/) - next →: [Continents and oceans](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/5-continents-and-oceans/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)