Whether it’s the world rotating around the Sun or shift workers shifting between days and nights, our time is determined by a variety of spinning events. Some of these events occur every day while others are more unpredictable and more irregular.

For instance, many people are aware that Earth revolves around the Sun each day for 24 hours. It is not widely known that the speed of rotation can change and make the day appear longer or shorter than it should. This is the reason that atomic clocks that keep a standard time must be periodically adjusted by adding or subtracting seconds. This change is known as leap seconds.

Precession is a typical rotational event. It is the oscillation of the Earth’s axis, similar to the spin of a toy top that is a little off-center. This axial shift in relation to fixed stars (inertial spaces) has a duration of 25,771.5. It is the cause for many weather patterns, like the alternating direction between cyclones in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Scientists have also noticed that the speed of Earth rotation slows with time, which causes solar days to get longer. On June 29th, the world added an additional leap second to the atomic clocks in order to better align them with the axis of the Earth. Although the addition of one second may seem small but it could have a significant impact for businesses that rely on changing schedules. For multinational companies with a global workforce managing the changing schedules of calls by fumbling around static wiki pages or spreadsheets can be costly in terms of reputation and revenue. On-call rotation software https://northcentralrotary.org/2019/10/13/an-international-organization is becoming more popular because it cuts down on interruptions in service and also manages the transfer coverage and provides transparency for employees.