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cdmoomaw t1_jdx62pm wrote

US Eastern time (UTC-5) is “ideally” centered at 75° W, extending 7.5° to either side. By this logic, one would expect the time zone to extend roughly from 67.5° W to 82.5° W. This actually puts all of New England in UTC-5 except only for the very easternmost parts of Maine.

Where things get wacky is looking at the other end of Eastern Time. 82.5° W falls just a bit west of Cleveland, and yet the time zone continues way past that. Really, MI, IN, KY, TN, GA, and over half of OH should be on Central time, but they aren’t.

I’m not sure how things came to be this way, but it’s interesting how our use of time has drifted from the idea of “Solar Time” in a lot of places.

I’m not arguing what we should or should not be doing about this. I just think this is some interesting context.

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JJ2o2o t1_jdxsrx8 wrote

As a Michigan kid, I absolutely loved it being still light at 9:30pm in the summer.

4:15pm sunsets in December here get me bummed but I've gotten used to it.

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bthks t1_je21soh wrote

As a Massachusetts kid, that 4:15 sunset for you was at 3:15 for us. Got to watch it on the school bus on my way home each day.

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JJ2o2o t1_je24xz5 wrote

The 4:15 sunsets I’m referring to are in MA. Sun doesn’t set before 5pm in most of Michigan. I’ve never seen a sunset before 4 in MA.

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bthks t1_je2bwlu wrote

Ah, I misunderstood you-thought you were talking about growing up in Michigan and seeing 4:15 sunsets there. Maybe I’m remembering the end time of school, but there were definitely rides home where the school bus had to turn their lights on.

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sad0panda t1_jdxk30w wrote

Thank you. I've grown really tired of people saying New England should be on AST or permanent DST. When we are on standard time we are right where we are supposed to be, in terms of solar time.

Yes, this means ~4:30am sunrises and ~7:30pm sunsets in the summer. 👍

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freakydeku t1_jdza3pb wrote

but most of us get no daylight during the winter since people generally don’t wake up at 4am.

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Current-Photo2857 t1_je1a4a4 wrote

You wouldn’t get daylight in the winter waking up at 4am anyway? In standard time, winter sunrise is around 7am or later (which is when PLENTY of people are waking up/heading to school or work)…if we were in DST in the winter, sunrises would be as late as almost 8:30 for some areas, and most people need to be awake and at work before then.

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sad0panda t1_je24x8o wrote

I said summer, not winter. There is no such thing as a 4:30 sunrise in winter. Except in Australia maybe, but they call it summer too last I checked.

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snozzcumbersoup t1_je099qd wrote

We're already on DST for 8 months out of the year. I don't hear anyone complaining about it. Why would we switch to ST? Most people are not up at 4:30am, but are up well past 7:30pm.

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sad0panda t1_je1pucn wrote

Standard time means the sun is directly above you at noon (or, roughly close to it). DST is the "switch". Until 2007, DST was 4 weeks shorter.

Personally I'm actually OK with the time change. Once you get to a certain point in summer, yeah, 4:30 sunrise doesn't really make sense. But it should happen in April and October, not March and November. This 6:30 sunrise is killing me, we were just making progress when the DST switch hit.

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AnonymityIsForChumps t1_jdy4fiy wrote

That's only the ideal if you think that noon should be the middle of the day. I don't.

I'm almost always awake 8 hours after noon at 8 PM, but almost never awake 8 hours before noon at 4 AM. The schedule of our lives aren't centered around noon, so why should the daylight hours?

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RandyCheeseburgers01 t1_je12h3j wrote

I guess the question is why our days are no longer centered around solar noon. Intuitively, that has to be the most natural way, evolutionarily speaking. Our circadian rhythms haven't changed drastically since the Industrial Revolution. That's not the kind of time scale evolution operates on.

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RandyCheeseburgers01 t1_je122ma wrote

^ This guy/gal gets it. It's more nuanced than "I want the sun to set every day at 8 PM so I can exercise after work!!"

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