Globe - Latitudes and Longitudes

Q27. Why do we have standard time?

Ans. The local time of places which are on different meridians are bound to differ. For example, it will be difficult to prepare a time-table for trains which cross several longitudes. In India, for instance, there will be a difference of about 1 hour and 45 minutes in the local times of Dwarka in Gujarat and Dibrugarh in Assam. It is, therefore, necessary to adopt the local time of some central meridian of a country as them standard time for the country.

Q28. What is the significance of longitude and latitude?

Ans. To fix the position of a place, it is necessary to know something more than the latitude of that place. For example, that Tonga Islands (in the Pacific Ocean) and Mauritius Islands (in the Indian Ocean) are situated on the same latitude (i.e., 20° S). Now, in order to locate them precisely, we must find out how far east or west these places are from a given line of reference running from the North Pole to the South Pole. These lines of references are called the meridians of longitude.

Q29. How does the longitude affect the time?

Ans. When the Prime Meridian of Greenwich has the sun at the highest point in the sky, all the places along this meridian will have mid-day or noon.

As the earth rotates from west to east, those places east of Greenwich will be ahead of Greenwich Time and those to the west will be behind it. The rate of difference can be calculated as follows. The earth rotates 360° in about 24 hours, which means 15° an hour or 1° in four minutes. Thus, when it is 12 noon at Greenwich, the time at 15° east of Greenwich will be 15/4 = 60 minutes, i.e., 1 hour ahead of Greenwich time, which means 1 p.m. But at 15° west of Greenwich, the time will be behind Greenwich time by one hour, i.e., it will be 11.00 a.m. Similarly, at 180°, it will be midnight when it is 12 noon at Greenwich.