What Does a Dam Do to the Earth’s Rotation?

Dams change how the Earth rotates. Are we going faster or slower?

Too much work in your workday? If we just build a few more dams, we could extend the day to get enough hours to get everything done! Photo by T L on Unsplash

Allow me to provide the perfect excuse for why you don’t get everything done each day at work: a day is not, actually, 24 full hours.

It explains so much! According to Scientific American, one rotation of the Earth, in relation to a point on its central axis, is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds. This means that each day, we’re planning for nearly four more minutes of accomplishment than what we actually are able to squeeze in!

In all seriousness, most of us probably have more than 4 minutes’ worth of work to accomplish. And I’m willing to admit that, at least for me personally, procrastination and internet-based distractions account for far more time wasted than the Earth’s rotation.

Still, it’s a bit irksome that we don’t have a rotational period of a nice, even 24 hours.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do something about it?

Maybe we could slow down the Earth’s rotation, to make it a full 24 hours — or even add another hour, get us up to a 25 hour day. Then we could all be more productive.

Or perhaps we should speed up the rotation, cut it down to 22 hours or so. We could get to sleep a little faster…