What is 24 time zones?

The Earth is divided into 24 time zones, like slices of a big orange.

Imagine you and your friend are playing a game where you both start counting from 1 to 24, but you're on opposite sides of the world. When it’s morning for you, it might still be night for your friend, that's because time zones help us know what time it is in different places.

Think about a giant clock around the Earth. The Earth spins like a top, and as it turns, different parts of the world see the sun at different times. So we split the whole planet into 24 pieces, each one gets its own time zone.

It’s kind of like having 24 friends all around the globe who each have their own hour on the clock. When your friend in New York says it's noon, someone else in Tokyo might be saying it's midnight.

If we didn’t use time zones, everyone would follow the same time, even if it was morning for you and night for your friend! That could get confusing when you're trying to call someone or plan a playdate across the world.