Ever wonder how much daylight you can gain or lose just by
getting in your car and driving either West or East? Here’s how
to figure it out. The Earth’s circumference is about 25,000
miles (40,000 km) at the equator. So if you start out at sunrise
and drive 1,000 miles (1,600 km) Westward during the daylight
hours, you’ll get almost an extra hour of daylight. On the other
hand, if you go East, you’ll lose that much. 1,000 miles is
pretty much the maximum you can go in about 12 hours, and that’s
going pretty fast (about 80 mph, or 130 kph). But there’s a
trick to stealing extra daylight. Get away from the equator. The
higher (it’s my northern hemisphere bias; sorry, Aussies!) your
latitude is right now, the better you’re going to do. There are
two reasons: - It’s summer in the northern hemisphere, so you
start with more daylight hours. This gives you more time to
travel, and the farther you go, the more daylight you can steal.
- (And this is the big reason.) The distance to go around the
Earth is much shorter.