How many hours from UTC +14 to UTC -12?

June 20, 2018 6:49 AM

If you had an event that started at midnight/00:00 at UTC +14 and ended at 11:59pm/23:59 of that same day in UTC -12 (from the Easternmost timezone to the Westernmost timezone), how many hours is that event total?
posted by divabat to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

Best answer: 50. The clocks in UTC-12 are 14 - (-12) = 26 hours behind the clocks in UTC+14. So they will run for 26 hours just to get to the time and date where your UTC+14 clocks started, and then run another 24 hours to get to 11:59pm.
posted by dfan at 7:02 AM on June 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: 00:00 UTC+14 1st July
is
10:00 UTC 30th June

23:59 UTC-12 1st July
is
11:59 UTC 2nd July

So: 50 hours (or 49 hours, 59 minutes if you're being very specific)
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:04 AM on June 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Another way to think about it: you've scheduled a normal 24-hour midnight-to-midnight event somewhere in UTC+14. But just before the clock runs out, you fly west one timezone, where it's only 11pm, and have gained one hour of event time before the clock strikes twelve. One hour later, you do the same thing, and repeat until you have put the deadline off by one hour 26 times and have run out of time zones. Your whole event lasted 24+26=50 hours.
posted by dfan at 7:07 AM on June 20, 2018

Best answer: If timezones were logical (ha!) and divided the Earth by lines of longitude then the answer to this would be 48 hours= 2x24.

But it is 50 because of weird stuff like Kiribati. That is, if another Kiribiati decided to create UTC+15 then the day would be even longer. The answer is based on politics, not astronomy.
posted by vacapinta at 7:28 AM on June 20, 2018 [2 favorites]