Leap Year Doesn't Work

gekko · 01-30-2002, 04:47 PM

Wow, I was bored in math today. So you get my little findings.

The leap year is supposed to add an extra day every 4 years because there's actually 365.25 days in a year. There's still only 24 hours in a day, so we don't get screwed up with the .25. We just don't quite make it all the way around the sun.

Problem is a year isn't exactly 365.25 days. To be exact, it's actually 11687750361/32000000 days per year. That comes out to be approx. 365.242198781 days per year. So take the difference and you figure out that an actual year is .00780121875 days shorter than we believe. While that seems to be a small number, it does come out to roughly 11m 14.023s per year. So every leap year, where the extra day is supposed to get us back on track, we actually come short of making the full rotation around the sun.

So think about this, every year we lose 11 minutes. So every leap year, we end up about 45 minutes behind. Let's round up and say we lose an hour ever 4 years. So then every 96 years, we actually lose a day. So if you think about it, in roughly 16,800 years from now, December will be Summer, and July will be winter.

Just thought I'd point that out.

DeathsHand · 01-30-2002, 04:52 PM

ummm... gasp? Or something?

that's neat though... kinda... yeah... well... I'll... go eat some peanuts now...

I would add something intelligent to this new little discussion, but I am not... how you say... smrt...

Gamer · 01-30-2002, 04:55 PM

Geeze you musta been bored man! But anyways, thats kinda cool, hmm, i'd think that they will make some sort of arangement to figure out something so that december remains a cold month!

BreakABone · 01-30-2002, 04:57 PM

Well um interesting fact I guess if any of us live for 16,800 years.. but I guess in our lifetime we will be short a day.. or there about

Ginkasa · 01-30-2002, 05:08 PM

Umm.... okay....

Cool.

BTW, Ithat you made this whole thread to prove that our calendar doesn't work because the people who came up with it rounded the amount of days in the year..... yet you rounded the 45 minutes to an hour...

LoudHowardZERO · 01-30-2002, 05:29 PM

The sad part is it's kinda cool...

And hw did you get the idea to do this?

gekko · 01-30-2002, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Link1130
Umm.... okay....

Cool.

BTW, Ithat you made this whole thread to prove that are calendar doesn't work because the people who came up with it rounded the amount of days in the year..... yet you rounded the 45 minutes to an hour...

It's our calander. And I did the rounding so it's easier to think of. At 45 minutes, it would take 128 years before we lose a day. And that's still rounding. I'm not a scientist trying to determine just how long it'll take to get snow in july. I'm just giving a general explanation that leap year doesn't work, and eventually, the seasons will be flipped around.

gekko · 01-30-2002, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LoudHowardZERO
The sad part is it's kinda cool...

And hw did you get the idea to do this?

Well you see, my calc does unit conversion, and one of them is time. I knew it wasn't exact, so I decided to mess around with it, and then started wondering what happens when we lose time every year.

Boredom is a weird thing.

GameMaster · 01-30-2002, 07:31 PM

Geez, it sure s cold for being July

Mechadragon · 01-30-2002, 08:28 PM

America's Seasons would be like Australia's in a way

Xantar · 01-30-2002, 09:36 PM

First of all, I think you made a slight math error. Every leap year, we don't end up short. We end up ahead. The leap year system assumes that a year is 365.25 days long whereas the year is actual year is 365.242198781. See, the actual year is shorter than the year as our calendar puts it. So leap years are actually putting us ahead.

To compensate for this, years divisible by 100 are not leap years. For example, the year 1100 wasn't a leap year. You calculated that we lose a day every 96 years. Since you got your subtraction backwards, what happens is we gain a day every 96 years. So after 100 years, we've gained a day and then some. So every hundred years, we don't have a leap year when we normally should (i.e. we lose a day) to compensate.

Some of you are probably saying, "Hey, wait a second! The year 2000 was a leap year!"

Others will be saying, "That's all very nice, but then won't we be losing a fraction of a day every 100 years?"

Both of these issues are resolved by a further wrinkle in the calendar. Years divisble by 100 are not leap years unless they are also divisible by 400. 2000 is divisible by 400, so the year 2000 was a leap year. The year 2100 will not be.

This still doesn't get things exactly right, but it's pretty darn good. At this point, we might be more concerned with such things as the fact that the rotation of the earth is slowing down (i.e. days are getting longer).

Shadow Fox · 01-30-2002, 10:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Xantar
This still doesn't get things exactly right, but it's pretty darn good. At this point, we might be more concerned with such things as the fact that the rotation of the earth is slowing down (i.e. days are getting longer).

Which WILL happen, since the sun is constantly dying. The gravitational pull will gradually die as well, along with the pace of the earth's (and every other planet's) rotation. Not that this will happen in our lifetime, but if you start to notice it's nighttime at 10AM at that location in the world, start praying...

GameMaster · 01-30-2002, 11:16 PM

When we're grandparents, I'm more than positive we'll have already begun colonization on places outside of Earth

ed328 · 01-31-2002, 01:37 PM

Quote:

First of all, I think you made a slight math error. Every leap year, we don't end up short. We end up ahead. The leap year system assumes that a year is 365.25 days long whereas the year is actual year is 365.242198781. See, the actual year is shorter than the year as our calendar puts it. So leap years are actually putting us ahead.

Every leap year we do end up short. Since the actual year is shorter than the calender year, we start every year 11.23 minutes later than we should. Thus we get behind each year. Not taking a leap every so often like you said allows to "skip" a day and catch up to the actual year.

This is an interesting article on the leap year.
http://www.corkscrew-balloon.com/tra...aris/leap.html

DimHalo · 01-31-2002, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gamemaster2002
When we're grandparents, I'm more than positive we'll have already begun colonization on places outside of Earth

I agree. And I hope to be one of the lucky people to get to live somewhere else.

This whole leap year thing is very interesting but I figure I will just take what "they" give me and not question it. This is why i am NOT a scientist.