Daylight Savings Time Revealed

DST meaning has been changed over the years from check the batteries in your smoke detector to "saving energy", to children waiting for school buses.

For radio people it is easier to understand DST in terms of daily AM power and pattern changes.

Time is an invention and the clock is a visual representation of that invention. When farmers awaken, they are basing the start of their day by the sunrise. Sunrise occurs at the same time every day.

But wait, "my clock shows different times each day!"

Yes it does, because a clock does not use the rotation of the Earth, which is what determines local "sunrise".

If we were to use the reference of the Rotation, we would be changing our clocks every day as we used to do with a radio station sunrise sign-on.

The reason we use DST, twice a year, in the way we do, is a compromise because to get millions of people, in just this Country alone, to change their clock 365 days a year would be impractical at best. Disastrous at worse.

The FCC deregulation changed the requirements, over the years, to minimize the amount of different changes, which is why your AM radio station changes the time of the power and pattern at the same time at start of each month instead of everyday. Politics determined the minute with which that occurs.

The human body responds better to awakening to the sun than it does to dark. Going to sleep doesn't negatively affect the body near as much as waking up.

We don't really need DST in this State because as you get closer to the equator, the less the swing between the amount of daylight between Winter and Summer (as we call it).

Quiz:
Between Anchorage, New York, and Sa-ra-so-ta!, which has more daylight over the year?

Ans:
None. The further North you travel, the more the difference between the Summer Solstice and the Winter, but averages the same 12 hours of each in every place on the Planet.

Florida has 2 time zones because it spans a large distance East to West. I-10 alone, is over 362 miles long, and the Palm Beach Inlet at 80* 02' 14w is even further East. It is easier to keep it in line as the areas up North most influential to that longitude.


Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!