{"id":423,"date":"2008-02-29T04:38:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T04:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/witpoko.com\/?p=423"},"modified":"2008-02-29T04:38:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T04:38:00","slug":"why-is-today-feb-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/?p=423","title":{"rendered":"Why Is Today Feb 29?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at the Bad Astronomy<\/a> site, there is a very clear explanation why we have leap years. It has to do with the number of days in a year not being exactly 365 days, but about 365.25. Adding extra days over the years has an effect of syncing the calendar with actual physical years. (Remember that 1 day = one rotation of the Earth and 1 year = one orbit of the Earth around the Sun.)<\/p>\n

The algorithm to determine if a year (in A.D., like 2008; for B.E., subtract 543 first) is a leap year is this: If the year is divisible by 400, it’s a leap year. If it’s not divisible by 400 but divisible by 100, it’s not a leap year. If it’s not divisible by 100 but divisible by 4, it’s a leap year. Other years are not a leap year.<\/p>\n

Besides the article, the site is an excellent source of information about science and astronomy. A few of my favorite articles are Bad Movies<\/a>, Apollo Moon Hoax<\/a>, Coriolis Effect vs. Water Drain Direction<\/a> (and here too<\/a>), and Just Another Face in the Crowd<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>I first heard of Bad Astronomy during my honeymoon. Aor and I went to Sydney, Australia for honeymoon. I, being a very romantic guy, went to visit Sydney bookstores with Aor in tow. I bought Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy book<\/a> and found it to be one of the best science books I read in (not so) recent years.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at the Bad Astronomy site, there is a very clear explanation why we have leap … Why Is Today Feb 29?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[155,274,273,272],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-science","tag-algorithm","tag-bad-astronomy","tag-leap-year","tag-phil-plait"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4UNq0-6P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/witpoko.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}