You drive from Atlanta, Georgia (which is on Eastern Time) to Birmingham, Alabam

Question

You drive from Atlanta, Georgia (which is on Eastern Time) to Birmingham, Alabama (which is on Central Time, one hour behind Eastern Time).

You have two time measuring devices with you. The car's clock and a stop watch.

At the beginning of your trip, you set the stop watch. When you cross the state line, you re-set your car's clock from Eastern to Central time. At the end of your trip, the stop watch says that the trip took 2.5 hours.

How long did the trip take, according to your car’s clock?                             [ Select ]                       ["1.5 hours", "2.5 hours", "3.5 hours"]      

Is it possible to say, with confidence, which time measuring device (car clock or stop watch) accurately reports the elapsed time (delta t) of the trip?                             [ Select ]                       ["yes", "no"]      

If so, which one? [the stopwatch, the car's clock, it is not possible to say for sure]

Explanation / Answer

Stopwatch works irrespective of the time zones so time taken in the trip is truly report by Stopwatch.

so time taken in the jouney is : 2.5 hours.

Now since the Central time is one hour behind eastern time, it will show 1 hour less than actual trip time on setting the time from Eastern to central.

e.g. you left at 11:00 am, reached the state line at 1:30 pm and then reset the time to 12:30 pm to match the central time so you clock would show 1.5 hours taken in the trip.

so car's clock would show 1.5 hours.

By elapsed time if you meant

1. time taken in journey

then stop watch shows actual time taken

2. if you meant "elapsed time shown by car clock due to time difference"

then difference of the time shown by stop watch and car clock is the answer.

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