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Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

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Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#81

Post by tzs »

One of the main purported benefits of DST is that it in effect moves some of the extra sunlight from the longer days of summer from the morning to the evening, where most of us are in a better position to use it.

That's because without DST as the day lengthens the extra daylight is split evenly between morning and evening.

But WHY does it split evenly? It's because we historically use noon as our reference. We think of noon on day N+1 as being exactly one day after noon on day N. Noon is a sensible reference, fairly easy to determine with ancient technology.

Suppose that instead we had historically used sunrise as our reference. By definition, then, sunrise would be 8 AM every day. As the days lengthened in the summer, all of the extra daylight would then have shown up in the evening automatically.

It's interesting to ponder whether or not such a reference could have worked. I think that in the days before clocks, when the sundial was the most sophisticated timepiece, this could have worked quite well. It would also fit in well with work schedules, meaning people who needed to wait for light to work would be going to work at about the same time every day. It would also fit in with animal sleep schedules.

With clocks, though, a noon reference is easier. A sunrise reference requires a much more sophisticated clock, or it requires frequent manual adjustment.

Nowadays, though, clocks easily have the sophistication to handle that. We probably could actually reasonably handle using sunrise as our reference, and have our clocks adjust daily to keep that so.

It would mean that a given clock time on day N+1 is no longer exactly 24 hours later than that same clock time on day N, but I don't think that would matter for ordinary life. I'd be willing to put up with that if it means I get the benefits of DST (more evening light in summer) without the two big discontinuities a year.

Edit: to be clear, I am assuming that if we did a sunrise-based system instead of a noon-based system we would still do time zones. 8 AM would be simultaneous everywhere in the zone.

[1] In this comment "day" refers to sunrise to sunset.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#82

Post by rocqua »

racer-v wrote: post #45
kemiller wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good God, no. The time isn’t just an arbitrary number to help coordinate meetings, it communicates what time of the day/night cycle you’re experiencing, to a reasonable approximation. Having separate time zones may be annoying, but it forces you to think about others’ experience. If I say I was up last night til 4 in the morning, that tells you something.

Agree. Noon should be the moment when the sun is at its highest altitude in the sky, or a close approximation thereof.

I think the sunrise is a better fixture socially, and maybe the sunset is a better fixture biologically. Noon is just an easy to measure compromise for the above two.

Social life and timing mostly revolves around how early you get up. "Its late" kind of means "I am behind schedule to get enough sleep before waking up".

Biologically, we are programmed around sunlight. Whilst our mornings aren't really controlled by the biological clock (that is what the alarm is for), the evening really are. Besides, the for many people, the evening is what separates 'civil life' from 'private life'.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#83

Post by Koshkin »

shmerl wrote: post #73
mintplant wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched my own "native" time format to 24 hours years ago, in my head and on all my personal devices. Now I'm able to convert between the two formats effortlessly, and doing mental math on times is easier when I don't have to mix in a bunch of modulo-12 operations. (I live in the US.)

Same thing here. I use 24 hour system anywhere I can. Converting it isn't an effort for me. But I wish everyone around would use it.

Well, in English, you can't say "16 o'clock", can you? You can only say "sixteen hundred hours" (which sounds terrible, if you ask me).

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#84

Post by blt »

mintplant wrote: post #66
shmerl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this whole DST shift is pointless. Just keep it constant but standard, not DST. Also, I'd prefer a switch to 24 hour time notation. AM/PM is cumbersome.

I switched my own "native" time format to 24 hours years ago, in my head and on all my personal devices. Now I'm able to convert between the two formats effortlessly, and doing mental math on times is easier when I don't have to mix in a bunch of modulo-12 operations. (I live in the US.)

How long did it take you to switch? I've had my phone in 24-hour mode since May. I can convert without thought now, but I still think in 12-hour time internally.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#85

Post by Retric »

tzs wrote: post #81

One of the main purported benefits of DST is that it in effect moves some of the extra sunlight from the longer days of summer from the morning to the evening, where most of us are in a better position to use it. That's because without DST as the day lengthens the extra daylight is split evenly between morning and evening. But WHY does it split evenly? It's because we historically use noon as our reference. We think…

Calibrating a sundial to noon is a one time effort. Calibrating a sun dial to dawn requires an update every single day. Further, dawn depends on local geographic conditions making it an ambiguous term.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#86

Post by shmerl »

Koshkin wrote: post #83
shmerl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing here. I use 24 hour system anywhere I can. Converting it isn't an effort for me. But I wish everyone around would use it.

Well, in English, you can't say "16 o'clock", can you? You can only say "sixteen hundred hours" (which sounds terrible, if you ask me).

Yeah, sixteen hundred hours sounds awful. Sixteen o-five sounds OK to me though.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#87

Post by penagwin »

tzs wrote: post #68
poulsbohemian wrote: post #2

Personally, it would be brilliant if we'd just go to permanent daylight savings time nationwide. The transition is hard on the kids and living in the northern part of the country, the extra daylight is appreciated.

If kids are a concern, what about the problem of DST in winter in northern areas meaning kids go to school in the dark? For example I see kids walking to school at around 7:15 AM (6th-8th grade and high school) and around 8:30 AM (K-5th grade). This is at latitude ~47.7° N (same latitude as the city that is part of your name, in fact). Here is what various DST options would do in terms of kids going to school before…

I'm not sure what you mean, here in Michigan a large chunk of the school year (maybe 50% ?) the highschool/middleschoolers go to school in the dark. It usually dark for another hour or more.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#88

Post by tzs »

racer-v wrote: post #71
tzs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If kids are a concern, what about the problem of DST in winter in northern areas meaning kids go to school in the dark? For example I see kids walking to school at around 7:15 AM (6th-8th grade and high school) and around 8:30 AM (K-5th grade). This is at latitude ~47.7° N (same latitude as the city that is part of your name, in fact). Here is what various DST options would do in terms of kids going to school before…

This is just a problem of schools starting too early. You can't fix stupid. Although isn't the idea of "permanent DST" an oxymoron?

I agree that middle/high school is arguably starting too early (especially since research has shown, I believe, that teens really should be sleeping later).

In the case of elementary school, though, you are dealing with kids young enough that they probably cannot reliably be counted on the get ready and leave for school on their own, and so you need to fit school times in with their parent's work schedule.

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#89

Post by santaclaus »

mikestew wrote: post #49
KGIII wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dark when we go out. It is dark when we come home. We get down to about 8 hours of daylight, I'm pretty sure. 8:15, I think? I could Google that. I'm at about the 47th.

8:25 is the shortest day in Seattle (a tad north of the 47th), which is further north than anywhere else that isn't in WA (except for that little piece of MN). That's being nit-picky, though, as the practical outcome is that anything less than nine hours means you'll go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.

> which is further north than anywhere else that isn't in WA (except for that little piece of MN).

Alaska?

Re: Massachusetts is considering leaving the Eastern Time Zone

#90

Post by Mz »

tzs wrote: post #81

One of the main purported benefits of DST is that it in effect moves some of the extra sunlight from the longer days of summer from the morning to the evening, where most of us are in a better position to use it. That's because without DST as the day lengthens the extra daylight is split evenly between morning and evening. But WHY does it split evenly? It's because we historically use noon as our reference. We think…

There is one flaw with your theory here: Historically, noon was defined locally by the sun being directly overhead. All time was local time.

Then we invented trains and railroads and you couldn't schedule anything with such a system. Thus was born standardized time zones where it is the same time across large swaths of land. Noon is no longer strictly correlated to the sun being directly overhead.

I think there are all kinds of things we could do, including promoting the gig economy. If I work when, where and as much as I choose, it makes little difference what time it is (as long as I meet deadlines).

The world population is both high enough and mobile enough that you can now find 24 hour establishments in a lot of places, even relatively small towns. The small town I am in has enough 24 hour places that I have quite a lot of latitude on when I shop, when I get lunch, etc. I don't care all that much when the sun rises or sets. I care much more about things like if it is raining, and that is because I live without a car, so I walk everywhere.

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