HESI Reading Passages

HESI Reading Passages Changing Time/Daylight Savings It is a well-known fact that it takes the Earth approximately 365 days to move around the sun. At the same time. the Earth revolves or spins around itself over the course of 24 hours, which explains why there is day and night. One half of the Earth is always facing the Sun and the other half is facing away from it. As a result, there are different time zones dividing the globe, moving suddenly from one time zone into the other, as when flying for example from Asia to North America, causes jet lag. People feel tired, they wake up suddenly during the night and cannot go back to sleep. It takes time to get used to a new time zone. Another thing to consider is the slight tilting of the Earth towards the sun. The Earth does not stand straight but leans a little to one side. Therefore, when it revolves around the Sun, the middle part of the Earth is always closer to the Sun and gets more heat. This part is called the equator, and above it lathes tropics. Countries at the tropics get the same amount of daylight all the time. The sun always rises at 6 am and sets at 6 pm. In contrast, the tips of the Earth or the Poles get hardly any light at all because they are so far away from the sun. There are two main seasons at the Poles. There are 6 months of summer, when the sun is always shining, even at night, and there are 6 months of winter, when there is constant darkness. In between the tropics and the Poles lies the temperate Zone. where there are 4 seasons, the sun rises and sets at different times throughout the year. In the spring and summer, it gets light earlier; in the fall and winter it gets dark earlier. People who live in temperate zones take advantage of that fact to get more daylight. At the beginning of spring, countries in Europe and North America Read just their clocks. They change the time on their clocks and watches by moving them an hour ahead. As a result, the sun does not set around 7 or 8 am as usual, but an hour later. This measure is called Daylight Savings Time (DST) and lasts until the beginning of fall, when people move their c