On average the sun is up 6am to 6pm, but people's schedules are
later. [1] We try to fix this with Daylight
Savings Time, moving solar noon to ~1pm. Britain has considered a
Single-Double
system where solar noon would be ~1pm in the winter (like DST) and
~2pm in the summer (double DST). We can take this further, and match
our society better to the daylight hours: every year survey people to
find out the middle time point of the average day. If that's more
than an hour away from solar noon, add or remove an hour to move us
closer to matching the sun.
(Why do people stay up later than the sun? What happens when you try
to fight that? Do people just stay up later? Do we like it to be
dark out? Do we have trouble getting ourselves to go to bed?)
[1] If you surveyed Americans my guess is you'd get something like 7am
to midnight.
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