We live in a world that operates like clockwork. But that clockwork would be dysfunctional without time zones. When arranging a remote meeting between colleagues across the globe, it's crucial to know what time it is where you're meeting them. Otherwise, it may be breakfast when they are having lunch, and 4 pm could be pitch dark when they're getting ready to wrap up.

Fortunately, there are 24 time zones on the globe to make our lives easier. Each zone is 15 degrees of longitude wide and represents a unique location on the Earth.

Most of the United States population lives in the Eastern, Central, and Pacific time zones. However, there are a few other states that have their own special time zones, including Alaska and Hawaii. And then there are the various US territories, including Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Combined, these territories and regions have 11 different time zones.

The most populated time zone is the Mountain Time Zone (MST). MST is observed in six states in the United States and also by two provinces in Canada as well as by the Mexican state of Nayarit. The MST zone covers a large portion of the Western United States and even goes up to the Arctic Circle in Russia and China. As a result, MST is the most populated time zone with nearly 1.3 billion people living in its bounds. It's the second most populated time zone overall after GMT-12 which has a staggering 1.252 billion residents.