Leap Day 2020!

Today is February 29, 2020, and it is Leap Day 2020!

Leap Days Only Occur Once Every Four Years

There are many ways to do this. You could do work on some important project of your own, decide to sit on your couch and binge-watch Netflix, or use the day to completely rest and recharge.

Why do leap years exist?

According to The Lighthouse:

Leap years happen every four years, except if the year is a multiple of 100. But then years that are a multiple of 400 are also leap years. This complex arrangement has a 2000-year history.

The reason for an extra day in a leap year is that there are two fundamental time cycles both to do with rotation. One is the time it takes for the Earth to rotate once on its axis – that’s 24 hours, which is a day. The second is the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun — which is 365.24 days.

NASA Science also explains:

It takes Earth approximately 365 days and 6 hours to orbit the Sun. It takes Earth approximately 24 hours — 1 day — to rotate on its axis. So, our year is not an exact number of days.

Because of that, most years, we round the days in a year down to 365. However, that leftover piece of a day doesn’t disappear. To make sure we count that extra part of a day, we add one day to the calendar approximately every four years.

Lifehacker has posted some interesting choices:

How to Make the Most of Your Day

Celebrate the coming of spring by reading The Seasons: Spring by James Thomson.

Thank you for reading The Literary Lioness!