Time zones game: time differences, flights and meridians
A geography game for understanding time zones. If it is 10:00 in Madrid, what time is it in Tokyo? The student turns a clock hour by hour to the other city’s time, works out the local time a flight lands and taps the time zone on the map where it is a given time. When the sum goes past midnight the clock changes day, and when it is marked the whole calculation is shown.
Geography · Primary, Secondary
Madrid is UTC+1 and New York UTC−5: the difference is −5 − (+1) = −6 hours. It is the same subtraction of integers as in maths, but here the sign means something you can picture: further west, it is earlier.
The Earth turns 360° in 24 hours, so each hour is 15°. With the striped map the student sees it for themselves: 75° west of Greenwich is five zones and five hours earlier.
Madrid lies in the Greenwich zone but keeps Central European Time, and the Canary Islands are an hour behind. The game keeps each city’s official time (UTC) apart from the theoretical zone time, which is exactly what causes confusion in exams.
"A flight leaves Madrid for New York at 9:00 on Monday and takes 8 hours. The student first adds the flight (17:00 in Madrid) and then turns the clock back 6 hours: it lands at 11:00 on Monday, New York time."
Prefer to learn without screens? Try this analogue version:
On a world map, draw the meridians every 15° and number the zones from Greenwich: +1, +2… to the east and −1, −2… to the west.
Choose five cities, look up their UTC offset and work out the time in each when it is 12:00 in class.
Plan a journey with a stopover and work out the local time of each arrival.
On a map of official time zones, find three countries that do not use the zone their longitude would give them.
If you like What Time Is It There?, these activities work similar skills:
Ten rounds with the same mechanics, untimed and marked.
Latitude and longitude: place each country on the globe.
Theory exam: maps, scales, parallels, meridians and projections.
More practice on · Geography
Representing the Earth
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