Day and Night

Puzzle. The length of the day today in Boston is the same as the length of the coming night tonight. What is the total length of both?

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7 Comments

  1. Konstantin Knop:

    Is length of night = “the time between the sunset and the next sunrise” or “the time between end and start of astronomical twilights”?

  2. tanyakh:

    Between sunset and sunrise.

  3. Mike G.:

    I’m tempted to take the easy solution and notice that it didn’t specify the length of the coming night _in Boston_, so it can be pretty flexible 🙂

  4. Mike G.:

    Couldn’t resist looking for the harder answer. How fuzzy can equality be? If we do +/- 1 minute, then March 17 (day) and March 17-March 18 (night) look like a pretty good match, at about 11:59 each, for a total length of 23:58.

    https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/boston?month=3&year=2019

    For a more exact equality, I’d have to fire up Mathematica and hope it’s got a sunrise/sunset data set…

  5. RoyG:

    My brain keeps thinking “12 hours, it is probably wrong!” But it is the only length that makes sense, or “infinitesimally” close to 12 hours, so MikeG is probably right.

  6. tanyakh:

    Hint: if the day is exactly the same as the next night, when is the equinox?

  7. kitsu:

    i don’t geet what most people are talking about. however, a day+ night is always 24 hours, right, if they are distinctly partitionaed?

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