Last Update: Tuesday April 13, 2021

Do you know your Global Time Quadrants (GTQ)?


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Let's get to know the world by Time Zones

Time keepers use Coordinated Universal Time: UTC (also known as TUC or CUT) can get quite complicated. The professionals who are constantly updating their listings based on geopolitics, know how much detail is involved and how complicated it can get. To see, click on the embedded link within the word, Time keepers, just above (a Wikipedia window opens).

UTC is useful to keep the entire world on the same relative time with each other, but it is confusing to understand the most basic geography of time zones and how many countries within each geography share a common time.

Throughout this website and television series, every time zone will be known by the number of hours it is behind the beginning of the new day.

When the time turns 12:01 AM within any village on the International Date Line, Sydney should be 2 hours earlier or Time Zone (TZ) #3. Logically, it should be 9:01 PM in Seoul and Tokyo (TZ 4), 8:01 PM in Beijing (TZ 5), 12:01 PM in London (TZ13), 8:01 AM in NYC (TZ18), and 2:01 AM in Hawaii (TZ 23). Daylight Savings Time and countries that set their time on the half-hour make it difficult. Yet, once we know in which time zone a country or city is (and we know the time zone we are in), calculating the time within most other countries becomes easier. It is not an absolute number but it should be within three hours of their actual time. First, all of China is in one time zone (Beijing), then daylight savings, half-hour offsets, and geopolitical -- albeit local -- designations account for that three hour range and no less than 600 possible deviations from commonsense logic.

Obviously, this simplification of a complex subject needs refinement.

Notwithstanding, we really should eliminate all references to regional time zones. Consider in the USA, there is Eastern Standard Time (EST), Central Standard Time, Mountain Time, Pacific Standard Time, Alaska Time Zone, and the Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone. Eliminate all those references to the region, and call Eastern Standard Time, Time Zone 18 (TZ #18). Automatically one begins to visualize every other country within the Time Zone (Canada, the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and a little part of Brazil). If known as TZ #18, one knows the time (within an hour because of daylight savings options) within those countries in that time zone and one can readily begin calculating the approximate time in the other countries around the world.

More...

Things children should know (and the rest of us, too).

Do you know what time it is on the International Space Station?

A different perspective. This is an introduction to a rather simple concept to use the 24 time zones to help orient our thinking about the world. It is an ordering system to learn geography and the approximate time (within a few hours) in most countries of the world.

The concept of the GTQ was first introduced in 2009. Those professional people who work to track and know the actual time in every location on earth have no use for the concept. It is too generalized.

However, if a person can visualize their GTQs, they begin to visualize the world in a new way. To do so, you need to be able to answer these key questions about the world's time zones:

1. What time zone are you in? Clue: Always between 1 and 24

There are 24 time zones, each a number between 1 and 24. Know your four. Start here.

2. What is the time zone 12 time zones away?
Clue: Subtract ( or add) 12; keep that number between 1 and 24.

Learn the name of a country (and capital) on "the other side of the planet".

3. What time zone is 6 hours east of you?
Clue: Add 6. Keep the number between 1 and 24.*

Learn the name a country in that time zone six hours east of you.

4. What time zone is 6 hours west of you?
Clue: Subtract 6. Again, keep the number between 1 and 24.

Learn the name of a country in that time zone six hours west of you.

When you know your four time zones, you know your GTQs.

Although the Universal Time Coordinates (UTC) is used for determining time throughout the world, why not use the Time Zone numbers -- 1 to 24 -- to learn the relative relation of all the countries of the world and to determine the approximate time within each country?

Using a very simple logic, we begin with the area defined within 7.5 degrees east and west of the International Date Line and designate it, Time Zone #1. Then for every 15 degrees of longitude, add another hour right up to Time Zone #24. At any given time of the day, if you know the local time in your own time zone, you can more readily calculate the logical time in the other three quadrants. The net result is that you begin to visualize the entire earth's 24 time zones and all the countries in each.

As you get your GTQ bearings, be sure to learn some of the simple things about those other three time zones. For example, what is the largest country and the largest city in the each? Once you are able quickly and assuredly to visualize each of your Global Time Quadrants, you will have begun the process of being able to calculate and know the time (within a few hours) in every country of the world.

Small Business School is most active in the seven time zones of the USA:
• Time Zone 18 includes the East Coast, from Maine to Florida .
• Time Zone 19 cuts a wide swath from Chicago to Dallas to New Orleans.
• Time Zone 20, known as Mountain Time in the USA, includes Denver and Phoenix.
• Time Zone 21 in the USA, Pacific Standard Time, from Seattle to San Diego.
• Time Zone 22 includes Juneau and Anchorage.
• Time Zone 23 includes the Hawaiian Islands.
• Time Zone 24 includes America Samoa.

*An exercise and demonstration

Now the first Small Business School office was in New Orleans (1994). In 2009, Small Business School opened a little studio there. That is within Time Zone #19 or TZ19.

The largest country that is on the other side of the globe that is within 97°30′E to 82°30'E longitude is India and technically that slice of longitude defines TZ #7. Tibet is also in TZ #7. It is certainly not precise. India marks its time by a different set of determinants and China has designated every region of their country to be within TZ #5.

Six hours to the east is Time Zone #13 which is also known as Greenwich Mean Time, also the Universal Time Coordinate (UTC). Of course, there is the United Kingdom, but also Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, and Morocco, the Western Sahara and thirteen other African countries.

Now, six hours to the west of New Orleans (TZ19) is TZ #1. Here you find Kiribati, New Zealand, Fiji and others.

Define your four quadrants! Once you have those four, begin to learn the locations of countries and principal cities within each. And now, you will begin to fill in the blanks time zone by time zone. It is an exercise to learn the locations of countries relative to the technical definition of the time zone as defined by longitude.

Today's longitude and latitude lines were established as recently as 1884 when delegates from 25 nations, all using their own unique designations, convened the International Meridian Conference and formally adopted a system that used the Greenwich, England meridian as the Universal Prime Meridian. It established or instantiated the 0-points for longitude, and, of course, the equator established 0-points for latitude. The rest is just an extension based on elliptic geometries. These lines are just a convention that has been recognized and is used by every scientific person in the world.

Please send your comments, questions and suggestions to Bruce Camber (November 2009)

Thoughts on GPS locations: GPS Coordinates GPS Cities A simple idea And even more.