If it’s the Earth rotating around the Sun or shift workers shifting between days and nights, our time is affected by a myriad of events. Some of these events occur every day, while others are less predictable and more irregular.
For instance, most people are aware that Earth revolves around the Sun every day. It is less well-known that the speed at which Earth rotates can change and make the day appear shorter or https://northcentralrotary.org/2019/10/13/an-international-organization longer than it should. The atomic clocks, which maintain an uniform time, need to be adjusted frequently by adding or subtracting seconds. This is referred to as leap seconds.
One of the more regular periodic events that rotate is precession, which is the cyclical wobble of the Earth’s axis of motion, much like a spinny, slightly off-center spinning toy top. This axial shift relative to fixed stars (inertial space) has a period of 25,771.5 years, and it is the cause of various weather patterns, such as the shifting direction of cyclones across the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
Scientists have also discovered that the speed at which the Earth rotates slows down over long periods of time, which causes solar days to become gradually longer. That’s why, on June 29th, the world added an extra second to atomic clocks so that they could better align with the actual global rotation. Although the addition of a second may seem minor but it could have a significant impact for companies that depend on changing schedules. For example multinational companies that rely on the world’s workforce, having to fumble through static wiki pages and spreadsheets to keep track of changing call schedules can be costly in terms of revenue and company reputation. On-call rotation software is becoming popular because it cuts down on service interruptions and manages the coverage of transfers and provides transparency for employees.