Extended Daylight Time is a Bad Idea
The goal is to save energy, but the cost could be more than the savings. The problem is that every computer programmed to take account for daylight time will have to be updated. We have a tough enough time dealing with differences in time zones now. This is only going to make it worse.
Below is a small simulation. Check the box in the lower right hand corner to turn on the daylight time controls. Then grab and drag the blue handles to change the time of year that DST starts and ends. The new law will move the begining of DST from approximately Apr 2nd until March 8th. (Its a bit more complicated, but that will suffice for the simulation). The simulation assumes that you sleep from 10pm until 6am.
As far as I can tell, there is no benefit to extending DST since there is no more ’sleeping light’ (lightness while we are asleep) saved, and ‘waking dark’ (darkness while we are awake) is not reduced.
| Waking Darkness | Total Savings | |
| Sleeping Light |
Update 4/10/2006 @ 3:34 EDT: James brings up a good point in the comments. The sunrise and sunset times for this graph are based on the data from the US Naval Observatory for one year in Chapel Hill, NC. So it represents an average of the US.
Daz said,
April 9, 2006 @ 5:01 pm
The clocks changing always really annoys me. Why can’t people just change when they’re doing stuff and leave the time be.
James said,
April 10, 2006 @ 12:32 pm
I think the amount of time saved/lost would also strongly depend on your latitude - the further north you are, the bigger the swing between winter and summer in the length of the day. Perhaps you can add that to your application, so we can find out if that’s the case
beav said,
April 13, 2006 @ 2:28 pm
Nothing saves me time. I’m lazy and semi retarded.