Time

If it’s 3:00pm for you right now, what time is it in another country? It might be an hour ahead or behind, or it might be the next day! How would we find out?

 

Practice Problem- At 10:00am in London England, Sahar decides to call her friend Richard in Alberta Canada. She’s surprised when he picks up the phone and asks angrily “Do you know what time it is?” What happened?

Solution:

1.       Identify the time zones involved.

Using a time zone map, we can identify that London England is in the GMT +1 time zone and Alberta Canada is in the GMT -6 time zone.

2.       Calculate the difference between the time zones.

We use subtraction with integers to determine the difference between the time zones.
1 – (-6)
= 1 +6
= 7

Therefore the difference between the time zones is 7 hours

3.       Determine the converted time.

We know its 10:00am in London England (GMT +1). Since we are determining the time for an area to the left of our original location, the new time is behind by the difference in time zones.

The time in Alberta (GMT -6) is 7 hours behind. 7 hours behind 10:00 am is 3:00am.

Therefore, Sahar called Richard at 3:00am when he was probably sleeping.

Here's a video summarizing what you've learned so far about Universal time by Darron Gedge's Geography Channel