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Time

Noon (12:00) should be defined as the time at which the sun is highest. Because this is different for all locations on earth, causing trade/logistic problems, we created timezones (great invention), which are all linked to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), another great invention. By al these human definitions of time, 12:00 is now no longer the time at which the sun is highest, but it's a fair approximation of that.

I watched a video of VSauce on YouTube, titled "How Earth Moves", it gives great insights on how earth moves relative to the sun, and, from earths perspective, how the sun moves as seen from earth. It also provides a solar-graph (see below), a plot of the position of the sun over the year.

solar-graph

If we would not have daylight saving time, the sun would be at the yellow dots at 12:00, which is quite far off from it's highest point. This makes it perfectly clear why winter/summer time is a natural phenomenon.

If you agree with me, that we should keep daylight saving time, then please fill out the Survay

Femke and I had a 4-year ongoing debate on whether or not Summertime made sense at all. I think it does make sense, since it corrects for something which happens anyways (sunrise is earlier in the summer). On the other hand, Femke strongly disagrees with me, because she says that the time of noon is altered. On 26th of March, we had to put this debate to an end for good, so we both spend our evening in the Google sheets, and found a dataset from the KNMI for sunset and sunrise times through the year 2022. We even found a mistake in the dataset which we corrected of course (12 october was the sunrise was at 7:59 instead of at 8:59 according to the source). We managed to make the following graph:

Zomertijd onderzoek

Unfortunately, Femke and I are both right, by a bit. Sunrise is a bit more consistent throughout the year due to the summer-time correction. Unfortunately tho, Femke is also right: summer time puts our biological clock off schedule, because the sun isn't exactly at it's highest point at 12:00 but rather at 12:45 in the winter and 13:45 in the summer.

Now, what is best for the world? Summer/winter time zone switching, or not switching at all? I guess we will have to sleep another night on it.