As time and tide wait for no man, we'll go straight to Newfoundland for this week's first question.
THE QUESTION: How did Newfoundland get its own time zone on the half-hour? asked Paul Everest of Toronto. And are there any other places in the world that have a half-hour time zone?
THE ANSWER: "Each time zone is, generally, centred on a meridian of longitude," writes Atul Kapur of Ottawa.
"At the centre of each zone, noon local time is when the sun is at its highest point (solar noon). At the edges of the time zone, solar noon is half an hour off from local time." The island of Newfoundland, he says, is entirely in the eastern half of the Atlantic time zone. And, if CW may interject here, St. John's is close to the zone's eastern border, and therefore 31/2 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time.
From here, Chris Livadas of Toronto takes up the story.
Newfoundland was a separate dominion when standardized time zones were developed, he says, and it simply chose to adopt its own time zone 31/2 hours behind GMT.
Meanwhile, Carla Hagstrom of Toronto points out that several other regions in the world have time zones that are off by a half-hour from their neighbours. India is half an hour ahead of Pakistan, which is on a standard time zone, while Afghanistan is half an hour behind Pakistan. Iran is a half-hour ahead of Iraq. And then there's Nepal, which is 15 minutes behind Bangladesh, which is on a standard time zone.
And we haven't even mentioned how some of these time zones are affected by daylight savings. And we're not going to.
FURTHER NOTICE
The Great Weight Debate — whether planet Earth is packing on the cosmic pounds — continues unabated. Last week, Gray Shanahan of Kandahar, Afghanistan, wrote that energy is equivalent to mass, and as some of the sun's energy is converted into matter by photosynthesis in plants, Earth's mass is increasing.
Not so fast, writes Philip Jessop of the department of chemistry at Queen's University in Kingston.
"Chemical reactions, like photosynthesis, don't create or destroy matter," he says. They just transfer matter (such as carbon dioxide and water) into other matter (such as the leaves of plants and oxygen). "The mass (the amount of matter) stays the same. The role of the sun's energy is to help the reaction along. This means that photosynthesis and plant growth aren't increasing the mass of the Earth. The conversion of energy into matter doesn't happen in a chemical reaction; it happens only in particle physics."
HELP WANTED
- When newscasts quote the price of oil, they refer to "light, sweet crude," writes Margaret Porter of Toronto. What's sweet about it?
- Which is the "greener" way to shave — using a rechargeable electric razor or using a razor blade, shaving cream and hot water? Norman J. Ruff of Victoria wants to know.
Questions and answers for Collected Wisdom can be submitted as follows. E-mail: wisdom@globeandmail.com . Fax: 416-585-5085. Mail: Collected Wisdom, The Globe and Mail, 444 Front St. W., Toronto M5V 2S9. Please include your name, location and a daytime phone number.
