A few years ago, a dispute between Kosovo and Serbia caused the entire European grid to drift away from 50.000Hz down to 49.996Hz. Millions of microwave clocks across the continent ended up 6 minutes late: https://hackaday.com/2018/03/09/europe-loses-six-minutes-due....
replyClocks used to be able to use the 60Hz cycle to track time, and grid providers would run slightly slow or fast ("time error correction") to get back into sync. A leap second would just be part of this.
replyI believe in the US this error correction has been discontinued in the East and in Texas, but is still done in the West for some kind of non-clock "inadvertent interchange" reasons I don't understand.
Wait is that why my oven and microwave clocks are constantly getting out of sync by multiple minutes every year?
replyOut of sync with each other, or are they drifting together in lockstep? In the latter case, yes, that's the most likely explanation.
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