Szökőév – mit is jelent?

This year, 2016, is a leap year. What does that mean? Leap year happens every four years. Every four years an extra day is added to the calendar, making the length of the year 366 days, instead of the normal 365. Why does that need to happen? The calendar is supposed to match the solar year, in other words, the length of time it takes for Earth to orbit the Sun once. But things aren’t quite that simple. It actually takes the Earth 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds to complete its orbit (about 365 1/4 days). Those extra hours gradually add up so that after four years the calendar is out of step by about one day. Adding a day every four years allows the calendar to match up to the solar year again. However, because the solar year isn’t exactly 365 days, even adding a leap day every four years means that the calendar is still out of step by 11 minutes and 14 seconds each year. Over the course of 400 years this would add up to three extra days. In order to solve this problem it was decided to leave out the leap year […]