The world’s curvature and movement only allows for a certain number of regions to share the same time at any specific point in time. These disparities in time have led to the division of various parts of the world into time zones. A time zone is a region that uses a standard time for all commercial, social and legal purposes. Even regions within the same time zone may suffer some disparities in minutes and seconds but use a standard time as a matter of convenience. You can use a time zone converter to determine what the time is in any part of the world today.
#1. Why you need a time calculator
When travelling through different parts of the world, it is difficult to keep track of the different time zones that you go through. When it is 8am in New York, the time in London is 1pm. If you have important meetings and events to attend, you need to keep time by using a time calculator to know exactly when you need to leave your country in order to match the correct time in a different time zone. It may seem complicated but if you plan right using these time calculators, you can meet your time requirements.
#2. How time zones work
The Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) is the single line where all time zones on land are offset. There are about 24 time zones around the world, 25 if you count the International Date Line. The offset from UTC to different time zones can be UTC + 12 or UTC – 12. The offset from UTC may be in minutes, hours, or both. Some of the high altitude areas also use daylight saving time for part of the year depending on the overhead position of the sun where the clocks have to change by an hour. With all this considerations to make, using a convenient time calculator makes it extremely easy for anyone to keep track of time anywhere around the world.
#3. How the time calculator works
Time calculators use a standard way of measuring time using the International Atomic Time (TAI). They use seconds, minutes and hours to measure time by coordinating atomic clocks. The UTC follows the TAI standards and that is why it is used to measure time around the world. You probably remember the Greenwich Meridian Time or GMT, which is often used to refer to UTC, but the two terms can be used interchangeably. GMT was replaced by UTC because it only used telescopes and solar time to measure time. UTC is considered more accurate because of the use of atomic clocks.
The change of time based on coordinates is determined by 15 degrees of longitude east of west from the prime meridian. The time calculator uses a sophisticated system that determines exactly how much distance the region is from the prime meridian to find the time disparity from the UTC. Using this system to calculate time will always keep you ahead of time wherever you travel around the world.
