Our day is shaped in various ways by the spinning of events regardless of whether it’s the Earth spinning around the Sun or shift workers who switch between days and nights. Some of these events happen every day while others are less predictable and more unpredictable.
For instance, most people are aware that the Earth revolves around the Sun every 24 hours. It is not widely known that the speed of rotation can fluctuate and make the day appear longer or shorter than it actually is. This is why atomic clocks that maintain standardized time must be periodically adjusted by adding or subtracting seconds. This change is known as leap seconds.
One of the more regular rotational events is precession which is the cyclical wobble of the Earth’s axis of motion similar to a spinny slightly off-center spinning top. This axial shift in relation to fixed stars (inertial space) is a time period of 25,771.5 years, and it is responsible for a variety of weather conditions patterns, including the alternating direction of cyclones in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
Scientists have also noticed that the speed at that the Earth turns slows over long periods of time, causing solar days to become progressively longer. That’s why on June 29, the world added the https://northcentralrotary.org/2019/11/16/rotating-events-in-our-time/ leap second to atomic clocks, so that they would be more in sync with the real-world Earth’s rotation. Although the addition of one second may seem small but it could have a significant impact for businesses who rely on changing schedules. For instance, for multinational companies that depend on an international workforce, fumbling through spreadsheets and static wiki pages to manage shifting call schedules can easily become expensive in terms of revenue and reputation. This is why more and more organizations are turning to software for on-call rotation to cut down on service interruptions and to manage the transfer coverage and ensure transparency for employees.
