Timezones.

[crazy legs]

I looked at a map of them on wikipedia and it looks like the lines bend around some islands. Does this effect the time difference or is it just for the purpose of fitting everything into the map, or something.tnx.

[BillyBB]

It's up to the inhabitants what time they say it is. General Chav recently changed the time in Venezuela.

[squarebear]

The lines bend around some islands and countries for convenience. It would be tricky to plan a journey if half of the country was an hour ahead of the other half.

[wildwood]

Timezones are a man-made invention and at some places like in Australia, run horizontal. During the new millennium saga some of the small pacific island even changed their time temporarily so that they could be the first one to see in the new millennium.

Timezones are necessary to compensate for the sunlight differential around the globe. Without timezones it would be pitchdark in Indonesia at 10am. You'd also run into trouble when you cross the 180� line because you'd have to suddenly loose/gain a whole day depending on which way you were traveling..

[sp1214]

I believe Russia has about 8 timezones. Must be difficult when travelling.

[squarebear]

It is. I remember reading about a town in USA which lies directly on a timezone line. Half of the town was an hour ahead of the other!

[north star]

Conversely, despite being such a large country, China has only 1 time zone

[crazy legs]

thanks people.

[Azalian]

The International Date Line nominally runs down the 180 degree line of longitude, vertically from pole to pole.

In places like Tonga and other Pacific island groups the line deviates to ensure that all islands in the group share the same time zone.

In Tonga, they make a big deal of the Date Line when they say that one side is ,say, Monday and if you step over to the other side it's Tuesday!

But thats just a tourist attraction, really, all tonga is on either Monday or Tuesday.

By the way time zone lines never run "horizontally " in Australia or anywhere else, ever!