Rotating Events in Our Time

Whether it’s the world rotating around the Sun or shift workers hopping between days and nights our daytime is affected by a myriad of events. Certain of these occur every day and some are more irregular and unpredictable.

For instance, the majority of people are aware that the Earth revolves around the Sun each day for 24 hours. It’s not as well known that the speed of rotation can change and make a day seem shorter or longer than it should. This variation is why the Atomic clocks that provide standardized time must be regularly adjusted by adding or subtracting seconds. This change is called a leap second.

Precession is a normal rotational event. It is a cyclical wobble in the Earth’s axis, similar to the spin https://northcentralrotary.org/2020/08/10/action-participants-by-board-room-is-a-book-about-work-that-everyone-should-read of a toy top that is slightly off-center. This axial shift with respect to fixed stars (inertial spaces) has the duration of 25,771.5. It is the cause for a variety of weather patterns for example, the alternating direction between cyclones in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Scientists have also noticed that the speed at that the Earth rotates slows down over long periods of time, leading to the solar days to grow longer. This is why, on June 29, the world added one second leap to atomic clocks, so that they would be more in sync with the real-world rotation of our planet. While the addition of one second may seem like a minor thing but it can have significant implications for businesses that depend on changing schedules and rotating times. For multinational companies with a global staff managing shifty call schedules by fumbling around static wiki pages or spreadsheets can be costly in terms of reputation and revenue. This is why more and companies are turning to on-call rotation software to minimize interruptions in service and manage the coverage of transfers and offer transparency to employees.