Leap Day
it’s leap day, and for the first time ever, I learned a few things about leap day today. A leap year occurs in those years that are evenly divisible by 4. Century years only count if they’re evenly divisible by 400.
This is done because the years are longer than 365 days, there’s a decimal number involved. If we didn’t have leap year, our seasons would shift by almost a month over the course of a century. By having the rules for leap year there’s not much of a shift in our seasons, and even with the slightest bit of a shift it’s not noticeable.
That’s what I learned today.
Cool! I’d always wondered about this but never took the time to do the research.
Would I expect any less from you?!?!
True! True! But did you know that we also have leap seconds added to the calender every so often? It’s done to align the “official” clocks (the Atomic clocks, the Navy clocks, and so forth) more accurately with the Earth’s rotation. Isn’t that insane? All this leaping leaves me quite confused!!!
Hi Melinda, I didn’t know there were leap seconds. I guess that they’re so small we don’t hear about them, but I’m glad that you’ve added to my knowledge, because knowledge is power you know ;)