Sixth Grade
Worksheets
Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?
What time is it? What day is it? Believe it or not, it depends on where on Earth you are!
Let's say you get home from school at 3:00. You get the mail and find out you have just won a contest. You call your friend in California to tell her the good news. She answers, sounding like she has a mouth full of food. You have caught her eating lunch. You think that 3:00 is a strange time for lunch. Then she reminds you that it is noon where she is- the perfect time to eat lunch. This time zone stuff is confusing!
The Earth rotates on its axis. It takes about 24 hours to make one turn. This is what causes day and night. When one part of the Earth is facing toward the sun, it is daytime there. The other part of the Earth is having night. This movement is what causes the sun to appear to rise in the east and set in the west. This is also why the world is divided into 24 time zones. You guessed it, one for each hour of the day.
During the 24-hour day, the Earth rotates 360 degrees. This means it rotates 15 degrees every hour. So, each time zone is 15 degrees of longitude. Within each time zone, all the areas have the same local time.
