Leap Year — What Makes it Different?
An Extra Day in February — Every Four Years
You might be wondering what is meant by Leap Year. Is it a year when conditions are especially good for leaping, or is there a public contest held that year to see who can leap the highest?
Short answer: No!
Leap Year only happens every four years. Each Leap Year, the month of February has an extra day, making it 29 days in length as compared to the usual 28 day month.
Each year, the calendar date comes one day later than it did the year before. For instance, if Christmas Day came on Tuesday last year, it would come on Wednesday this year. But every fourth year (Leap Year), it would leap over Wednesday and come on Thursday.
Calendars must have a recurring, set number of days with each day consisting of exactly 24 hours; but that is not the way the cosmos (or universe) measures days.
We know that the earth spins one full turn on its axis in a 24-hour day, and it spins once around the sun in a 365-day year.
I have heard that many people have traditionally thought of February 29 as an extra day, kind of like one extra card off the deck, to stop everything and do something they have been procrastinating on for too long.
That is not a bad analogy, actually, because the scientific necessity for adding an extra day (Leap Year) every four years is to give the Cosmos and the Calendar time to do a bit of catching up (or maybe a lot of catching up).
You see, not every day in the 365-day year is exactly the same length. It takes somewhat different amounts of time for the earth to spin one time on its axis, depending on the position in the rotation around the sun it happens to be.
Since a reference point is needed, scientists use the length of time it takes from the time the sun resides at due South to set and then rise again and make its way back to the Southern meridian; and this they call a solar day, or 24 hours (86,400 seconds).
In reality, each day may vary in a plus or minus direction from the numbers quoted above. Defining the time as a consistent 24 hour period is using the mean solar day.
So scientists keep track of the actual times for each daily rotation and calculate an average to help define the length of each year.
If no changes, such as Leap Year, were made, over time the alignment of the seasons would be skewed and the December Solstice might actually happen in July.
The numbers discussed above are based on the Gregorian calendar, and other calendars at other times in history have had different ways to adapt to the irregular times marked as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries, and millennia.
The Scientific American’s website has more information. If you would like to know more, go to : www.scientificamerican.com
Personal Note:
Do you know anyone, or are you a person, who was born on February 29?
Having a birthday only once every four years would be different, I am sure!
When I was a child, I remember learning that my oldest Uncle’s birthday was February 29.
I tried to correct this, as I was old and wise enough to know February had only 28 days.
This was when I first learned about Leap Year.
As it happened, my Uncle lived in a house that he and my Aunt had bought that was located on a local lakeside property. It was to be their retirement home, and their next door neighbor was an announcer for a local TV station.
On my Uncle’s birthday, the announcer closed his reporting by announcing that his neighbor had enjoyed his 16th birthday party that day, and he had invited all his children and grandchildren to attend. He said it was one of the most fun birthday parties he had ever attended!
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