Question

Why international date line is not straight line?

Answer 1

Why International Date Line is not straight?

It is International Date Line which is drawn at 180 degree longitude to determine the date which is passed through the Arctic Oceans, Bering Strait, Pacific Ocean, Antarctica, Fiji, Tonga and other islands.If we see this imaginary line, then we found, it is not straight but zig-zag line.

But, if it is a straight line, then it demarcates the same land mass into two parts and then both places have different dates on the same day. It would be very inconvenient if one part of a country had one date of the week while another part would have the different date.

International Date Line marks the place where each day officially begins. At the international date line, the west side of the line has been always one day ahead of the East side, no matter what time of day it is when the line crossed.

Answer 2

International Date line , i.e.180°longitude is not straight rather zigzagged .As our earth is  spherical in shape , places located on ìt recieves different amount of sunlight which give rises to discrepencies in timings over the places , in 18th century navigators  faced problems of knowing time while travelling from one place toothed so to avoid confusion over timings and also to locate places, an invisible grid of longitudes (vertical lines)  and longitudes (horizontal) was drawn over the earth to precisely locate any place on earth . While on the one hand there are some geographical reasons for choosing23 1/2°as tropic of capricon and cancer, on the other hand there are no substantiate reasons rather then the dominance of England  for its Greanwich being chosen as the 0°longitude.Then the longitudes were divided into 12time zones with a difference of 15° and 180 °was chosen as the International Date Line and and the clocks were to be adjusted relative to GMT.  When these talks were going on Islands lying on 180° lobgitude came out with there plea of subsequent circumstances of them facing the difference of 24hours within their respective countries.As requested by the islanders, Intenational community asked the governments of the respective islands lying on 180 ° longitude to decide which side they would prefer either east or west and subsequently some decided to be on the eastern amd some on western side.Finally the consensus was drawn on the line which we now called as International Date Line, a zigzagged line.

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