Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Why do we need leap years?
We had the 29th day in February this
year. You might remember that we have an extra day when we have the Olympic
Games. Yes, 2020 is a leap year. But do you know why we need to add an extra
day every four years?
An extra day is added to the calendar at the
end of February every four years, or in a leap year, making the year 366 days.
The extra day adjusts the variance between the 365-day calendar and the actual
time, 365.24 days, for Earth to rotate the sun. The leap years were set when
the Gregorian calendar was created by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.
But is that it? You might have realized that
the additional time to orbit the sun is 0.24 days to 365 days, NOT 0.25 days. What
does the calendar do with the variance?
Enjoy reading the article and learn about the
mechanism and origin of leap years.
No comments:
Post a Comment