Why is an extra day added to every February every 4 years?

Answer 1

The normal calendar has 365 days on it, but it takes the earth 1/4 day longer than that to travel all the way
around the sun in its orbit. So the earth is lagging a whole day behind the calendar every 4 years.

We make every 4th year 1 day longer, in order to let the earth catch up to the calendar.

If we didn't do that, then after 200 years, instead of March 21, the calendar would race ahead
all the way to May 10 before the first day of Spring came along.

Answer 2

Because the Earth takes very nearly 3651/4 days to complete an orbit around the

sun, and that's the real length of the year. So how many squares should we

have on our calendar ? 365 isn't enough, and 366 is too much. We save up the

quarters until we have enough to make a whole day, and then we add the whole

day to the calendar one time.

If we didn't do anything about the quarters, then every century, the seasons

would start about 25 days later. If the longest day of the year was June 21

in the year when Columbus discovered America, then it would be around the

end of October by now. None of that is exactly, but you get the idea.

Answer 3

a complete year ( the time passes while earth complete its tour around sun) is 365 days, 6 hours, 49 minutes. but we have 365 days. the remaining 6 hours an additional day in every 4 years. 49 minutes and the minors corrects in every 400 year and 4000 years but doesn't matter cause average human life is 72 years.

Answer 4

The Earth orbits the Sun every 365.256366 days. Since humans like to deal with whole numbers of days the extra day we add in a leap year accounts for the .25 of a day and brings us back into sync with the actual orbit.

Answer 5

An extra day is added to February every 4 years to account for the fact that it actually takes about 365.25 days for the Earth to orbit the sun. By adding a leap day every 4 years, we keep the calendar aligned with the Earth's orbit and prevent seasonal drift.