Here’s the basic fact about the Earth that makes Daylight Saving Time a great idea
Timothy P. Carney
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Switching our clocks twice a year is a bit of a drag: Just ask my 8-year-old son, who told me on Monday that he was too tired to eat. His body clock was still basically at 5:30 when I woke him up at 6:30. (That’s my fault. In past years, I spent the week before daylight saving time waking them all up 10 minutes earlier each day. This year I forgot.)
Or ask parents of young children how that “extra hour of sleep” goes when your 1-year-old has no idea it’s 4:45 am.
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I get it. I don’t expect everyone to love the clock changes. But if you simply cannot tolerate it, then you should move closer to the equator, or alternatively to a planet on which the axis is more perpendicular to its orbit.
If you picture the orbit of the Earth as a big, nearly circular flat disk and the Earth’s axis as a nearly vertical stick that travels around the perimeter of that disk, the stick is tilted rather than straight up and down. That’s why we have seasons, and it’s why our days vary in length of daylight.
On Dec. 21, New York City has nine hours and 15 minutes of daylight. On June 21, New York City has 15 hours and 5 minutes of daylight. That’s nearly a six-hour difference in daylight.
As you go further from the equator, that daylight difference between the winter solstice and the summer solstice grows. Helena, Montana, has a seven-hour, 15-minute difference between its longest and shortest days, while Miami has only a three-hour, 15-minute difference.
This large variation in northern latitudes in the U.S. leaves us to choose between three imperfect options:
Waste a lot of daylight in the summer because the sun rises before 4:30 a.m. in New York City, but most people don’t wake up until about 7 a.m. This is the “no daylight saving time” option, in which our clocks are always on what we now call standard time. Permanently move clocks ahead, saving that morning daylight, and so send children to school in the pitch black because the sun wouldn’t rise until 8:20 a.m. in January. Switch the clocks twice a year so that we’re not wasting daylight in the summer or sending children to school in the pitch black in the winter.
A country closer to the equator could easily just pick a time zone and stick with it. For the U.S., where most of the population lives more than 37 degrees from the equator and so has more than a 5-hour swing in daylight times, switching the clocks twice a year is preferable to either of the alternatives.
Or just move to Mercury, where the axis is inclined only 2 degrees to its orbit, and so you never have to change your clocks.