Is 12:30 in the day am or pm?

[ericmark]

Ante meridiem, meaning before midday and so before the sun reaches it's highest point, it would have traditionally before the railways been shown on sundials with the railways the whole of UK was standardised then during the war day light saving was introduced.

But this does not change the true local time as shown by a sundial, after 13:00 hours there is no problem it is clear if using 24 hour clock or 12 hour clock and even with 12 hour clock it is clearly pm.

There is no am or pm at midnight or midday but when is midnight and midday when using daylight saving time? Is midnight at 1:00 or 00:00 and is midday at 12:00 or 13:00?

 

[durhamplumber]

12.30 is 12.30.afternoon....12 hours later is 00.30.(30 minutes after midnight)
But then you know that..so why all the sundial and railway borlocks?

 

[ericmark]

Midnight is as name suggests the middle of the night and midday is again middle of the day, this is fixed to the suns position, not any government directive as how time should be used compared with the unified time consent (UTC) which was called (GMT) but since the Greenish observatory has moved that name was dropped.

Meridian is by definition half way between sun rise and sun set, so before that half way point it is am and after it is pm. However convention is to move the time by an hour at a time, there is a chart

which shows the point where the time changes so even if the midway point is 11:45 UTC we would still call 11:50 am however when there is a real time and a government declared DST which one is used to talk about midday? I have worked where we had 4 times, we had UTC called Zulu by military, we had camp time which was correct for that part of the world, Town time which was an hour added and only used in the capital city Stanley, and LMA time which was 2 hours added and done by the company I worked for. However midday and midnight was still the midway point between sun rise and sun set.

 

[EFLImpudence]

Midnight is clearly both 12am and 12pm.

Not sure what else you are asking.


Noon in Mold is 13h12'34" BST in the Summer - not allowing for oscillations of The Earth.

 

[JohnD]

Is 12:30 in the day am or pm?

If that's the question you are actually asking, it is 12.30pm

 

[Notch7]

Look out the window

Dark?....... Its probably midnight

 

[kentishman]

I think the point Eric is making is that am and pm relate to when the sun is directly overhead... (am is before and pm is after) and that originally, before daylight saving, 12 midday was defined as when the sun is directly overhead. With daylight saving, then in the summer the sun is directly overhead at 13.00; therefore, in the summer, should am and pm relate to 13.00, and not midday?

 

[EFLImpudence]

You could say that but it depends where you live.

If you live in Greenwich or anywhere else on the meridian - in the UK - then perhaps, but Cornwall is about 20 minutes behind.
Western France is on the meridian but Central European Time is one hour ahead so France is on BST (or DST) in the Winter and double in the Summer.

Portugal has London time but is ~35 minutes behind so it is never 12 o'clock at noon.

Just stick with what the clock says.

 

[ericmark]

I have run with two clocks in the summer for years, radio log is always UTC.

 

[rsgaz]

Cornwall is about 20 minutes behind

Years, more like!

 

[bernardgreen]

I have no time for this conversation...............

 

[DaveHerns]

I've got Roman numerals on my clock so it's XXXXXCCCC1111

 

[ericmark]

OK living room clock shows two roses past a twig. And in the main it is see you at 6:30 simply don't say am or pm, where the problem arises is when some one says see you at midday, is that sun dial time, UTC or DST?

 

[DaveHerns]

It's when the big hand and the little hand are both on the 12 for 99.99 % of people.