If it’s the Earth rotating around the Sun or shift workers switching between nights and days our daytime is shaped by many spinning events. Some of these events happen every day, while others are less predictable and more irregular.
The majority of people are aware that the Earth rotates 24 hours a day around the Sun. It is less well-known that the speed of rotation can vary and make the day appear shorter or longer than it actually is. This is the reason that atomic clocks that keep a standard time must be periodically adjusted by adding or subtracting seconds. This is known as leap seconds.
One of the most frequent periodic events that rotate is precession, which is the cyclical wobble of the Earth’s axis for rotation, much like a spinny slightly off-center spinny toy top. This tilt in axial relation to fixed stars (inertial spaces) has a duration of 25,771.5. It is the cause for a myriad of weather patterns such as the alternating directions between cyclones in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Scientists have also observed that the speed of Earth rotation slows over time, causing solar day to become longer. That’s why on June 29th the world added a leap second to atomic clocks, so that they could rotary young citizen be more in line with the real-world global rotation. While the addition of one second might seem like a small amount, it has significant implications for businesses who rely on changing schedules. For example, for multinational companies that depend on an international workforce, fumbling through static spreadsheets and wiki pages to manage the changing schedules of calls can easily become expensive in terms of revenue and reputation. This is why companies are using on-call rotation software to minimize interruptions in service and to manage the transfer coverage and ensure transparency for employees.
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