February 2012: A Leap Year
2012 is a special year because it is a leap year. It has 366 days instead of 365 days.
Why do you think leap years form every 4 years?
Leap Years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days to circle once around the Sun. This equals to 365 days plus an extra 6 hours.
We follow the Gregorian calendar which has only 365 days in a year. If we didn't add a day on February nearly every 4 years, we would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by approximately 24 days!!
There is a division of 4 years between each leap year because the 6 hours extra in each year need 4 years to make an extra day. This extra day is given to the 4th year. The last leap year was 2008. There was 6 hours period in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 to make the extra day in 2012. The extra 6 hours over the next four years will provide a extra day in 2016.
In Gregorian Calendar, a leap year needs to be evenly divisible by 4 and if the year is an end of a century year then it has to be divisible by 400. The leap year extra day is given to February because February has two less days during the regular year.
Julius Caesar introduced Leap Years in the Roman empire over 2000 years.
[Editor: A small correction to Adithya's article. It is the 6 extra hours in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 which are adjusted by an extra day in 2012. The concept of why we have leap year is correctly explained by Adithya.]
nice one i liked it
kinda confusing but good
Leap year is sometimes very confusing.But I understnad it in away.Its kind of funny to think of 2016.Feburary should feel very special because instead o 28 days,they get 29.
Leap year is very confusing
Leap years are so awesome
Why does leap year have to be the month Feb. I want it to be nov. I don't like november
if you dont like november you should let another month have it
Awesome article Adithya! Thanks for sharing!
Hey this year is a leap year!
Leap years are so cooooool!!!!!!!!
my dad birthday is on leap year so we celebrate it on the 28 any other year but this year we did on the 29.....HIS REAL BIRTHDAY
Hi Aditya,
Great Effort. Made a very interesting reading. Took me to my school days. Keep writing similar stuff
LEAP YEAR IS THE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At first I knew nothinng about Leap Year now that i've read this article I now know plenty.I learned reading this article that there are 6 extra hours each year which adds an extra day in February.
What if Leap Year was every 100 years not every 4 years?
Interesting. Seriously
I thought it was sooooo cool to learn about leap year!
I think that leap year is so important because in a century we will lose 24 days if we didn't have leap year.
What would happen if we had a leap year every two years?
I didn't know that there was an extra 6 hours!That is CRAZY! Also i didn't know that it took 4 years to make a full day in February!
WOW! I didn't think a "Leap Year" was for Earths alignment. I thought it was just an extra day for the world.
Since I read this article I know why leap year is every 4 years.
I didnt know that our calendar would be 24 days off for 100 years without leapyears, great research!
I never knew about Leap Year untill now.I think this artical gave me a lot of information. Now I know a buch.
I didn't know what Leap day was but this article explained it well.
I never knew it took approximently 365.242199 days for the Earth to circle once around the sun.
I never did any research on Febuary 29th im glad I know there is 6 hours in each year to make a leap day on the 4th year.
How is there 6 extra hours in a leap year?
I think leap year is also a tiring year because we have an extra day in the year.
I think that leap year is such an honor to have because it makes up the 24hours for 4 years to pick up our day and go back on track.
It is an interesting to know that every 4 years one year is added to February.
I thought that everyday wasn't 24 hours it was 23 hours and 56 minutes each day, but now I know why we have leap day.
I never thought about 6 hours adding up to 24 hours every 4 years!
I think it's intresting how we add on a day every four years because of the six hours.
I never knew about leap year until i read this article. I learned that it is a extra day added on to the month of Febuary every 4 years.
my birthday should be on saturday but its on a sunday!
I always knew Why we have leap years but its just weird to think that every 3 years before the leap year that we are missing 6 hours in those years and on years that we have a leap year we have one more day of school. Which I guess isn't a bad thing because than we get off of school a day early for summer... think about it :)
Cool
We learned about the leap year and why we have leap years on Earth in science class.....
cool
This is a great article. Leap years are really cool. I didn't know why we had them until I read this article!
i dont like leap years they are wierd
I don't like leap year it would really stink if your birthday was on a leap year
it would be on march 1
True
I think leap years are interesting.
I think leap years are interesting !
wow Adithya you did a great job. You really thought about it and worked it through. I enjoyed reading it. bye.
This is very useful.I was very questionful with leap years. Now I can really understand what it is, and not feel weird when people are talking about it.
Good job adithya!I wonder if someone had a birthday on leap year.
I really learnt what a leap year is today. Thanks for Sharing this article Aditya!