leap year question?

Question

can anyone explane why we have leap years and how did it start and why is it in Feb.?

Answer 1

Not really a math question, but---

There's no direct relation between how long it takes the Earth to spin once on its axis (a day) and how long it takes to orbit the sun (a year). The ratio happens to be close to 365.25 days. So that the calendar doesn't get out of sync with the seasons, the Julian calendar was developed by the Romans to account for that by adding an extra day to February every four years.

Why February? The short answer is that the Romans added the day to the end of their year, which was in February.

The year is actually closer to 365.2425 days long, so the Julian calendar picked up 3 days every 4 centuries. To adjust for this, the Gregorian calendar says that years divisible by 4 but not 400 are not leap years. Thus, 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, but 2000 was. 2100 will not be a leap year, so a child born on February 29th, 2096, will have to wait eight years to celebrate his or her first birthday!

Answer 2

Leap years are needed in order to keep the calendar year synchronised with the astronomical or seasonal year. 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. By occasionally inserting an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected.

I think it was added to February because in the old Roman calender there was another month between February and March, which was replaced by the leap day.

Answer 3

Leap years started when we figured out it really 365 and 1/4 days to orbit the sun. February was picked to add a day every 4 years because it is the shortest month.

Answer 4

The Earth goes around the sun 365 days and 1 quarter. Therefore every 4 years we celebrate leap year. It is in February because that is the shortest month.

Answer 5

A normal year is really 365 1/4 days long. So, every four years we just add another day, and February just happens to be the shortest month.

Answer 6

The actual time it takes for us to orbit the sun is roughly 365.25 so after 4 years we have collected an extra day. We add it to the calendar to make things normal. After a long while, we'd have summer weather in the winter.It's arbitrary why it's added to February.