Our time is shaped in various ways by the spinning of events, whether it’s the Earth rotating around the Sun or shift workers switching between the night and day. Some of these occur every day and some are more irregular and less predictable.
For instance, many people are aware that Earth revolves around the Sun every 24 hours. What is less well known is that the speed at which Earth rotates may vary which can make the day appear to be shorter or longer than what is expected. This is the reason why nuclear clocks which maintain a standard time must be periodically adjusted by adding or subtracting seconds. This change is called a leap second.
Precession is a common rotating event. It is a periodic wobble on Earth’s axis, similar to a spinning toy top that is a little off-center. This tilt in axial relation to fixed stars (inertial spaces) has the duration of 25,771.5. It is the cause for a variety 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, which causes solar days to become longer. On June 29th, the world added an additional leap second to the atomic clocks in order to better align them with the rotation of the Earth. Although the addition of one second may seem like a minor thing however, it could have important implications for businesses that rely on changing schedules and rotating times. For example multinational companies that depend on an international workforce, fumbling through static wiki pages and spreadsheets to manage the changing schedules of calls can be costly in terms of revenue and company reputation. On-call rotation software is becoming popular since it minimizes service interruptions and helps manage transfer coverage and provides transparency for employees.