What is a leap year?
February 29th only comes once every four years, so many people might not realize why the interesting calendar phenomenon exists. A leap year is a calendar “fix” because the earth’s rotation around the sun isn’t exactly 365 days (or 7,860 hours) so an extra day is added once every four years. This prevents Christmas from being celebrated in the summer, and lunchtime taking place at 3 a.m. and other wacky things that would be thrown off without the extra day. It’s still not perfect, though, as a leap day is skipped every 100 years unless that year is divisible by 400 -- in other words, no leap year in 1700, 1800, 1900, and 2100.
No comments:
Post a Comment