How Weird Are America's Time Zones?



When you are very much used to something, it's hard to perceive how weird it is to outsiders. Most nations of the world are small enough to exist in only one time zone. And then there's China, which is very big and still only has one time zone, but that's a different story. Anyway, I live pretty close to a time zone border, and have always been conscious of how to calculate the time elsewhere. When living in Central Time, I got used to everything on TV being an hour earlier than it should. The lines between zones aren't straight, and the reasons why are inexplicable. And then we're going to throw Daylight Saving Time in the mix. Someone who has never had to deal with time zones may find them quite confusing. Laurence Brown of Lost in the Pond explains how he first encountered American time zones and what it took to get used to them. There's a 77-second skippable ad at 3:20.


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Florida's timezone difference helped me get into grad school.

I had to take the GRE but the slots in Tallahassee were booked up, so I decided to take it in Panama City, which is an hour's drive away. Somehow I woke up late, with a scant hour to get to PC. I threw on my clothes and started driving. Then to my relief I passed the sign welcoming travelers to the Central Time Zone and reminding us to set our clocks back an hour.

That meant I had time to eat breakfast and still arrive early for the test, in a calm state of mind.

Until this video I never realized how odd it is that the west Florida panhandle and east Oregon were only one timezone apart.
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