FLASHCARDS! More than 24 Hours in a Day

Math Science History with Gabrielle Birchak

Trains, telegraphs, and global trade turned local solar time into a worldwide system, yet the story didn’t stop at 24 neat slices. In this Flashcards! episode, we explore why there are more than 24 time zones, how half-hour and 45-minute offsets came to be, how the International Date Line adds extra zones, why the North Pole has no official time, and how you’d pick a clock for a polar meeting (with a nod to Nunavut coffee culture near the top of the world).

G.M.T.- Great Mini Takeaways

• Prime Time: Why the “24-zone” model grew to include half-hour and 45-minute offsets.
• Date Line Design: How zigzags in the Pacific create “tomorrow” (and even UTC+14).
• Polar Protocol: No time zone at the North Pole, so teams pick one and sync.

Links & Resources

• What is Greenwich Mean Time? Royal Museums Greenwich. Royal Museums Greenwich
• The International Date Line explained. Timeanddate.com. Time and Date
• Time in Kiribati (GILT/PHOT/LINT; includes UTC+14) Overview. Time and Date
• Samoa’s 2011 “skipped day” (time-zone shift) Wired magazine. WIRED
• Alert, Nunavut (northernmost continuously inhabited place) Background. Wikipedia
• Tim Hortons locations in Nunavut (Iqaluit listings) Official directory. locations.timhortons.ca

(Note: You’ll hear a shout-out to coffee “near the top of the world” in Nunavut; official Tim Hortons locations are listed for Iqaluit. Alert is the northernmost inhabited place, but it’s a military station without a public Tim’s listing.)

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