The actual length of a year is about 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds (365.2425 days). So, to compensate, we have this system...
If a year is evenly divisible by 400, then it's always going to be a leap year. Otherwise, if a year is evenly divisible by 100 (but not 400) then it's not a leap year. If it's not evenly divisible by 400 or 100, but is divisible by 4, then is it a leap year. If it's not evenly divisible by 4, then it's never going to be a leap year. Every leap year has an extra day in February: the 29th.
This system is accurate to about 8,000 years. In 8,000 years, the calendar will be about a day behind. However, the rotation and orbit of Earth are not constants, they are changing very slowly. The orbit is slowing down, so probably in that 8,000 years, it will have also slowed down by the same amount the calendar has. Thus, it won't really be a day behind.
I've always thought February 29th would be a great day to have as your birthday. Although you'd obviously age at the same rate as everyone else, and probably celebrate your birthday on the 28th, it'd still be a rather unique birthday.
If that's all too boring for you and you don't really care... Just look at the silly little picture of the Genuine Penguin. I had used this penguin for a picture of an alien I once had on the Alien Adoption Agency. I named him Bobstopheles.
Friday, February 29, 2008
«Leap Year»
click image to view full
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Some Rights Reserved
Hey, I like your blog. Totally just learned about leap year in astronomy class yesterday.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, thanks for the pointer about search engines. I know my way around a computer well enough to get by, but beyond the basics... not so much. So, if I added tags would that help the whole indexing process?
Because so many people have mis-used meta tags, most search engines ignore them. People would put in key words that had nothing to do with their site.
ReplyDeleteI think what would help the most if you stick with the all image posts you have is alternate text on the image. You can do this easily enough in the html code.
When you post an image to blogger, click the Edit html tab and find alt="" in the code for the image. Between the quotes you can put a short description of the image. That's what the alt field is for, it's text that would show if the image couldn't be loaded.
I suggest that you include all the text you put into your images into this field. So for example, your March 1st article would have in its alt field of the first image:
alt="Ok. So, short pause on the ranting, and let me introduce the oh-so-lovable characters in my life."
Do this for every image. This should help search engines index the content of your blog.
I hope this helps.
Ok awesome. Thanks for your help! And yeah, lol, the names are kind of lame. But oh well, I'm growing kind of fond of them. :)
ReplyDelete