Our time is shaped various ways by the spinning of events regardless of whether it’s the Earth rotating around the Sun or shift workers changing between the evenings and days. Some of them happen every day, while others are more irregular and unpredictable.
For instance, most people are aware that Earth revolves around the Sun every 24 hours. The thing that is less well-known is the speed at which the Earth rotates can vary and make days appear longer or shorter than one would expect. The nuclear clocks, which have an uniform time, need to be adjusted on a regular basis by adding or subtracting seconds. This change is known as leap seconds.
One of the more regular rotating events is precession, which is the cyclical wobble of Earth’s axis of motion similar to a slightly off-center spinning top. This axial shift relative to fixed stars (inertial space) has a period of 25,771.5 years and is the cause of various weather patterns, including the rotating direction of cyclones within the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
Scientists have also discovered that the speed at which the Earth revolves slows down during long periods of time, causing the solar days to grow longer. That’s why on June 29th the world added one second leap to the atomic clocks so they could better match up with the real-world Earth’s rotation. While the addition of a single second may seem small but it has significant implications for businesses that rely on changing schedules that rotate. For instance, for multinational companies that depend on the creating a barrier free space for people with disabilities world’s workforce, having to fumble through spreadsheets and static wiki pages to manage shifting call schedules can easily become expensive in terms of revenue and company reputation. On-call rotation software is becoming more popular as it reduces interruptions in service and helps manage transfer coverage and provides transparency for employees.