5/6/2023 0 Comments Leap years![]() ![]() ![]() This overcorrected the problem, and created too many Leap Years every 128 years, the calendar would drift 1 day from the astronomical seasons. The calendar's only rule for Leap Years was that any year divisible by four was a Leap Year. Julius Caesar employed a mathematician called Sosigenes of Alexandria to address the problem of the drifting calendar, which the Roman empire had also noticed. Sosigenes of Alexandria suggested adding an extra day every 4 years to the Julian Calendar. Leap Years were introduced in the Julian Calendar, in 45 B.C. The day was also at the time proposed to be a festival in honor of a group of people called the Good-doing Gods.Īlthough decreed, the idea of adding an extra day every 4 years was not a popular one among priests and so the amendment to the calendar never took place. At the time a calendar year in Egypt was 360 days plus a "Little Month" that consisted of 5 days. One of the suggestions made in this decree was that an extra day should be added between the end of the Little Month and New Year. the priest's assembly of Canopus made a decree honoring Pharaoh Ptolemy III. The Egyptians were among the first civilizations to recognize the problem of the drifting calendar when in 238 B.C. Unless it is divisible by 400, and then it is a Leap Year.įor example, century years that are divisible by 100, such as 1800 or 1900, can't be Leap Years, unless they are also divisible by 400, as happens with the years 16, which were Leap Years.Īlthough this calculation system has worked fairly well, it is still not completely accurate, and scientists are looking for a way to regulate Leap Years better in the future.However, if the year can also be divisible by 100, it cannot be a Leap Year.When the Gregorian calendar was established, the following rules were designed to calculate Leap Years: 25 fewer days, the seasons would be off by 25 days, and the countries in the Northern Hemisphere such as the United States would experience Summer in February. If the Leap Year didn't exist, after 100 years of having. 25 difference is what gradually makes our calendar become out of sync, and over four years that extra day is added to realign the calendar and give Earth that additional time to do a full orbit around the Sun. As a result, it does not perfectly align with the solar year. However, it is not possible to represent a quarter of a day in a calendar, so a Common Year in the Gregorian calendar has 365 days. This happens because the Earth's orbit around the Sun takes around 365.25 days. The extra day corrects this discrepancy between the dating system and the solar system. If our calendar had the same amount of days every year, the calendar would eventually drift away from the events it is supposed to track and coincide with. The extra Leap Day is added to the calendar every four years so that our calendar stays synchronized with the astronomical seasons. The following years are going to be Leap Years: 2024 This happens every four years, when the extra day, February 29, is added to the calendar. A Leap Year is a year that has 366 days, instead of the usual 365 days. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |