WHAT IS LEAP YEAR?
This week's "Picture of the Week" refers to Leap Year. Exactly what is Leap Year and why do we have it?
Leap
year is when the calendar year is extended to have 366 days. A normal
calendar year has 365 days. The day that is added to the year is always
February 29th.
Why add a day to the calendar year? Julius Caesar first introduced the leap year concept. He figured out that the exact length of a calendar year is not an integral number of 365, but is rather 365 ¼ days. Therefore, adding an extra day every four years will even things out. This is done to put the calendar year into line with the length of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This will allow the seasons to always occur during the same months each year.
When do we have a leap year? The calendar year is 365 days long, (and there is no February 29th), unless the year is EXACTLY divisible by four. If the year is exactly divisible by four, then an extra day is added to the calendar and this is known as leap year. The exception to this rule is if the year ends in 00. If the year ends in 00 then it must be divisible by 400 in order to be considered a leap year. For example, the year 2000 is exactly divisible by four, (2000 divided by 400 = 5), so therefore there is going to be a leap year this year and there will be an extra day added to our calendar!
Here are some "Fun Facts":
*A person has a 1 in 1506 chance of being born on February 29th! To compare, the chance of winning the BIG GAME Lottery Jackpot is 1 in 76,275,360!
*The U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division estimates that there are 187,000 people in the United States and 4.1 million people in the world that are born on February 29th.