When is 12pm uk

Semantic enigmas. The body beautiful. Red tape, white lies. Speculative science. This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. The real question is: what is mid-day? John Hawthorne, Crawley, W Sussex. One must recognise the difference between points in time and periods of time. Midnight is the zero point in time when we start to build up 24 one-hour periods of time to make up a new day. So midnight is the point 0am. After a period of one hour we reach the point in time called 1am, and after 12 periods of one hour we reach the point called noon.

At noon the 13th one-hour period starts, ending at point 1pm. This process continues up to the point 11pm when the 24th period of one hour starts. This period ends in the middle of the night, 12 hours after noon at the point midnight or 12pm.

Geoff Berriman, Sandal, Wakefield. Working on the hour clock meant that there was no difficulty with midday - hours - but the Air Force could not countenance hours for midnight. We were instructed that the Air Force day began at hours and ended at hours. The two minutes between were ours to use as we liked. AS IS clear from consideration of the literal meanings of am and pm, noon is 12m, while 12am and 12pm have equal claims on midnight.

We tend to avoid 12m nowadays from fear that someone may think m stands for midnight, but in avoiding this confusion we have been thrown into worse confusion by trying to determine which of 12am and 12pm to assign to noon and midnight. As it is dark then, I've always supposed it is midnight. Denis Buckley, Darwin, Australia. But one minute after midnight Hence for consistent usage, 12am must mean midnight.

Adrian Pollock, Yardley, Pennsylvania. Regardless of thoughts about points in time, Also, an event that starts at This means that a meeting that starts at Therefore, Try booking some meetings, lunches etc at Think of it as simple counting. Thank you for all your comments. It is indeed a complicated question. Midnight on Sunday is during the night between Sunday and Monday, as Joe says. With the hour clock, we start again from after For example after we do have ; …..

Same way after noon i. What do you think Mr. I agree with others who reason that 12 AM is midnight, as AM is one minute past midnight. Just as AM is one second past midnight.

The 24 hour clock makes this more obvious and clear. How do we divide time? While days and years are fairly neat astronomical events, what explains months, weeks, hours and minutes? Why do we have daylight saving? When do the clocks go forward in ? Marking the start of British Summer Time, the clocks 'spring forward' in March, meaning we'll lose an hour's sleep When do the clocks go back in ?

Marking the end of British Summer Time, the clocks go back in October, giving us an extra hour in bed Discover gifts from the home of time Learn the story of Greenwich Mean Time. Keep track of time with Royal Observatory Greenwich watches, and our famous Shepherd Gate clock replica for your wall. Time to spare? Learn more about time and space with the Royal Observatory Greenwich. There are no standards established for the meaning of 12am and 12pm.

It is often said that 12am Monday is midnight on Monday morning and 12pm is midday. This puts all the times beginning with 12 and ending with am in the same one-hour block, similarly with those ending with pm. It can also be argued that by the time you have seen a clock showing at midday it is already post meridiem, and similarly at midnight it is already ante meridiem.

Times in the first hour of the day are sometimes given as, for example, am, with am corresponding to midnight, but with a time twelve hours later given as pm.

Another convention sometimes used is that, since 12 noon is by definition neither ante meridiem before noon nor post meridiem after noon , then 12am refers to midnight at the start of the specified day and 12pm to midnight at the end of that day Given this ambiguity, the terms 12 am or 12 pm should be avoided in order to provide a simple definition of midnight.

The current atomic clock system at NPL is the basis of all UK time, and cutting-edge research is being carried out to improve timekeeping accuracy even further. Learn more about our research on time. Learn more about our time services.