A:Did you set your clock forward for daylight savings time?
B: What? Why do we have to do that?
A: Well, at the start of the spring we usually have more daylight in the mornings and less in the afternoon. This is basically due to our position on the planet and the rotation of the earth. In any case, to take better advantage of the daylight available, we compensate by moving our clocks forward one hour.
B: I see. That’s convenient! I never understood things like this, such as GMT. I never know what time zone we are in or when to change my clock!
A: That just stands for Greenwich Mean Time. Here in California, we are in Pacific Standard Time, that is eight time zones west of Greenwich. Remember when we were in Beijing? Well, then we were in China Standard Time, and that’s eight time zones east of Greenwich!
B: That’s why it was so weird traveling from Beijing to LA! Because of the huge time difference, even though we left Beijing at noon and flew for more than eight hours, we still arrived in LA the same day at noon! It’s like we went back in time!
daylight savings time 夏令时间
daylight n.白昼
due to 应为
rotation n. 自转
compensate v. 补偿
convenient adj. 方便的, 合宜的
time zone 时区
go back in time 回到过去的时间
A:你将时钟调成夏令时间了吗？
B: 什么？我们为什么要那么做？
A: 因为在春天开始的时候，上午的白昼时间要长些，而下午的白昼时间要短些。 这是因为我们在地球上的位置以及地球自转。无论如何，我们要利用好白天的时间，将时钟往前拨一个小时来补偿时间。
B: 我明白了，那样做很合适。我从来不明白像” GMT”这类的事。我一直不知道我们在什么时区，以及什么时候来往前拨一个小时。
A: GMT是“格林尼治标准时间”的缩写。我们在太平洋标准时区，在格林尼治时区以西的第八时区。记得我们在北京的时间吗？那时我们就在中国标准时间，也就是格林尼治时区以东的第八个时区。
B:难怪从北京到洛杉矶旅行这么奇怪，是因为时区差异，即使我们中午从北京出发，飞行旅途超过8小时，到达洛杉矶时仍是同一天的中午。就像我们回到了过去。
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