What is the reason for leap years?

Answer 1

The time that it takes the earth to revolve around the sun is not a perfect multiple of the rotational period of the earth. In other words it is not exactly 365 days... it's more like 365.242375 days. As a close approximation, if you add a day every 4 years you get 365.25. If you also take away a 3 out of 4 centuries, you get 365.2425. This still isn't exactly right and will be off by a day in about 8000 years. However, in that amount of time the average year might have changed, so it doesn't make sense to account for that yet. All of us that are living now won't make it that far to care.

The Gregorian calendar was modified to include leaps that normally happen every 4 years. The exceptions are on '00 years. The year 2000 *was* a leap year, but 1900, 2100, 2200 and 2300 are not. 2400 will be the next century that has a leap year.

You can read more on Wikipedia at the link below:

Answer 2

A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing an extra day, week or month in order to keep the calendar year in sync with an astronomical or seasonal year. For example, February would have 29 days instead of just 28. Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year which is not a leap year is called a common year.

Leap years (which keep the calendar in sync with the year) should not be confused with leap seconds (which keep clock time in sync with the day).

Answer 3

The time it takes the earth to revolve around the son is 365.2422 days, so if you just have 365 days a year, each year runs a little short, which over the long haul totally messes up the seasons, so we add an extra day every four years to pretty much make up the difference, except we have to skip a leap year every 100 years (except for the hundred year years that are divisible by 400) which pretty much makes everything come out right, except for the occasional leap second needed to bring the clock into full alignment due to deceleration caused by the braking action of tides. (That was too much for one sentence, wasn't it? See the links below for more information.)

Answer 4

G'day Meatplow,

Thank you for your question.

I have attached sources for your references.

A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing an extra day, week or month in order to keep the calendar year synchronised with the astronomical or seasonal year. For example, February would have 29 days instead of just 28. Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year which is not a leap year is called a common year.

Leap years (which keep the calendar in sync with the year) should not be confused with leap seconds (which keep clock time in sync with the day).

I have attached sources for reference.

Regards

Answer 5

well 1 earth year is really 365 1/4 days, so every four years we add an extra day to a year, to recompense for the 1/4 days and that is what we call a leap year.

Answer 6

a year is approximately 365 and 1/4 days. so the seasons don't go out of sync we have a leap year every 4 years. every hundred years or so we have to miss one because it is not exactly 1/4 days

Answer 7

One year (one revolution of the earth around the sun) takes ~365.25 days (rotations of the earth). If we always had 365.0 days in a year, we would get off by 0.25 days each year. So, to prevent the calander from slowly becoming inaccurate (and screwing up things like seasons, which are based on our position around the sun) once every four years we add an extra day, thus covering the lost ground.

Answer 8

The reson for lep years is that it really takes 365.2429 days for the Earth to orbit the sun. People just round it to 365 and every four years, since roughly one day has passed once you add .2429 four times, is added.

Answer 9

One year, specifically, is 365 1/4 days. So, to make that a whole, every four years, that is recapitulated to be a whole day...