2024 Is a Leap Year! When Are Leap Years and Why Do We Have Them?
Handy Tech Group Inc.
Application & business problem solving experts of mechanical components sold to industrial OEM's in the Southeast
What Is a Leap?Year?
Simply put, a?leap year is a year with an extra day—February 29—added nearly every four?years to the calendar year.
Adding an extra day every four years keeps our calendar?aligned correctly with the astronomical seasons, since a year according to the Gregorian?calendar (365 days) and a year according to Earth’s orbit around the Sun (approximately 365.25 days) are not the same length?of time. Without this extra day, our calendar and the seasons would gradually get out of sync.
Why Do We Need Leap?Years?
The short explanation for why we need leap years is that?our?calendar needs to stay aligned with the astronomical?seasons.
One orbit of Earth around the Sun takes approximately 365.25 days—a little more than our Gregorian calendar’s nice, round number of 365.?Because the calendar does not account for the extra quarter of a day that the Earth requires to complete its orbit around the Sun, it doesn’t completely?align with the solar?year.?
Because of this .25 difference, our calendar gradually gets out of sync with the seasons. Adding an extra day, aka a “leap day,” to the calendar every four years brings the calendar in line and, therefore, realigns it with the?seasons.
Without leap days, the calendar would be off by 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds more each?year.