Our time is shaped many ways by the spin of events, whether it’s the Earth rotating around the Sun, or the shift workers who switch between https://northcentralrotary.org/ days and nights. Some of these events happen every day, while others are more unpredictable and more irregular.

The majority of people are aware that the Earth rotates 24 hours a day around the Sun. It’s not as well known that the speed of rotation can change and make the day appear longer or shorter than it actually is. The Atomic clocks, that maintain an established time, have to be adjusted periodically by adding or subtracting a second. This change is known as leap seconds.

One of the more frequent periodic events that rotate is precession, which is the cyclical wobble of the Earth’s axis of rotation, much like a spinny slightly off-center spinny toy top. The axial shift in relation to fixed stars (inertial space) has a duration of 25,771.5 years, and is the cause of various weather patterns, such as the alternating direction of cyclones in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Scientists have also noticed that the speed at which the Earth rotates slows down over long periods of time, which causes the solar days to grow longer. This is the reason why, on June 29th the world added a leap second to atomic clocks, so that they would be more in sync with the real-world rotation of our planet. Although the addition of one second may seem insignificant but it can have significant implications for businesses that rely on changing schedules. For instance multinational companies that rely on the world’s workforce, having to fumble through spreadsheets and static wiki pages to manage changing call schedules could be costly in terms of revenue and reputation. On-call rotation software is becoming more popular since it minimizes interruptions in service and manages the coverage of transfers and provides transparency for employees.