What is leap year?
A leap year is when there is an extra day in the year.
This day becomes February 29.
A leap year has 366 days as opposed to a normal year which only has 365 days.
Every four years, an extra day is added to the calendar and this is known as leap year.
Did you know?
The earth’s orbit around the sun takes a year and a quarter, so that’s 365 days plus a quarter of a day.
Every four years, the quarter becomes a full day, hence the reason for leap year.
According to www.infoplease.com, the extra day in leap year is to help synchronise the calendar year with the solar year.
The website further states that the length of the solar year is slightly less than 365 days and a quarter, by about 11 minutes.
To compensate for this difference, the leap year is skipped three times every four hundred years.
This means that a century year cannot be a leap year unless it can be divided by 400.
Thus 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, but 1600, 2000 and 2400 are leap years.
According to www.timeanddate.com, if a leap day wasn’t added on February 29 every four years, almost six hours would be lost off the calendar every year.
After 100 years, the calendar would be off by around 24 days.
Source: www.infoplease.com
