Leap Year

G

goat

crybullies own Damo and Phan
The Gregorian Calendar has 365 days.
There are 365.2425 days in a solar year or 365.5 with leap year.

So why does the Gregorian Calendar add a day every 4 years instead of subtracting a day?
 
The way I figure it, is the effect is the same either way -- delaying the start of March 1st by 24 hours, so there is a reset to make the calendar correspond to season and orbit.

I don't think people like the idea of a groundhog day; reliving the same calender day twice in a row, so the 24 hour delay before hitting a March 1 reset is accomplished by adding a 29th day to February
 
Cypress said:
The way I figure it, is the effect is the same either way -- delaying the start of March 1st by 24 hours, so there is a reset to make the calendar correspond to season and orbit.

I don't think people like the idea of a groundhog day; reliving the same calender day twice in a row, so the 24 hour delay before hitting a March 1 reset is accomplished by adding a 29th day to February
Click to expand...
I worded it to make it confusing, but if you ignore everything except the extra 0.2425 day in a solar year, leap year puts everything back in sync.
 
goat said:
The Gregorian Calendar has 365 days.
There are 365.2425 days in a solar year or 365.5 with leap year.

So why does the Gregorian Calendar add a day every 4 years instead of subtracting a day?
Click to expand...

I don't know but I had an uncle born on Leap Day.

I believe he would be 108 today if he had the horrific misfortune of living that long.
Instead, he died at 57, the same age that his father and his son both died.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
I don't know but I had an uncle born on Leap Day.

I believe he would be 108 today if he had the horrific misfortune of living that long.
Instead, he died at 57, the same age that his father and his son both died.
Click to expand...
Nifty, you're almost as confusing as me. A 40-year-old born on leap day will only have 10 birthdays.
 
goat said:
The Gregorian Calendar has 365 days.
There are 365.2425 days in a solar year or 365.5 with leap year.

So why does the Gregorian Calendar add a day every 4 years instead of subtracting a day?
Click to expand...

Obviously because those .2425 parts of a day that aren't counted, "build up" unaccounted for.

So every four years one full day has to be added to the calendar in order to get it back in line with the position of the Earth relative to the sun.

If we subtracted a day, it would put us even further out of sinc.
 
Nomad said:
Obviously because those .2425 parts of a day that aren't counted, "build up" unaccounted for.

So every four years one full day has to be added to the calendar in order to get it back in line with the position of the Earth relative to the sun.

If we subtracted a day, it would put us even further out of sinc.
Click to expand...
In the year 1900 and 2100 we skip leap year because they can't be divided by 400. That's where I get confused since .2425 x 4 = .97, which is .03 short, so I couldn't figure out why we skip a leap year.
 
All the JPPers with a master's degree or PhD, yet no one is interested in earth's solar year.
 
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