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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Leaping Into Leap Year!
It’s almost here, Leap Day! When? On Wednesday, February 29. That will give us 366 days in 2012 instead of 365. Why do we need that extra day, anyway? Believe it or not, without a leap year about every four years, we would lose days.
The problem is that our calendar and the number of the Earth’s revolutions around the Sun do not match. Our calendar has only 365 days in a year but it takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days to make it around the Sun. Even though that doesn’t seem like a big difference, .242199 is about a quarter of a day a year and in four years we would lose almost a day. Think about it! Seasons would...
