Leap-time (leap days and years and accumulations)

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

Bro Tyler (me) scribeth...

>Leap days are given once every four years because of the accumulation of
>extra time over the course of four years of the earths space travel around
>the sun.  That's why we get an *extra* day every 4th year (if the year is
>divisble by 4 evenly with no remainder).

NOTE:  If you don't want your head to hurt because of all of the 
       math and science to follow, please close this e-mail and 
       don't give it any attention.... but you might learn something
       in the process.

If I remember my science correctly.... the amount of time for the earth to
spin around once on it's axis (a solar day ... a.k.a. sidereal day) is ... 
23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds.  My New American Heritage dictionary
describes it as such...

    The time required for one complete rotation of the earth in
    reference to any star or the vernal equinox at the meridian,
    is equal to 23 hours 56 minutes 4.09 seconds

My New American Heritage dictionary explains a sidereal year this way...

    The time required for a complete revolution of the earth 
    about the sun, relative to the fixed stars, or 365 days 6 hours 
    9 minutes 9.54 seconds.

So getting a calculator out, I convert a sidereal year and a sidereal
day into decimal format ...

   1 sidereal year = 365 days 6 h 9m 9.54s = 365.25636 days
   1 sidereal day  = 23h 56m 4.09s = 0.99727 days

So... I'll bet that ya'll didn't know that by the time it takes for
the earth to travel completely around the sun is a number that ya'll
won't hardly believe.

     365.25636 days / 0.99727 days = 366.2562 

... we actually gain a day *in time* during a sidereal year.

What's wrong with that!  Nothing!  The math simply tells you something
that your teachers didn't, which is that there is really 366.25 "star
days" in a year, and that the effect of the rotation around the sun
is to subtract an effective day (it could have been to add a day, but
I guess the effective swirl of mass in the solar system was generally
in the same direction).  This ultimately means that our *24 hour* days
piled end-on-end are equivalent to 366.25 *solar/star/sidereal* days.
With an extra quarter of a day (.25 of a rotation) left over to accumulate.

So, we have about a quarter of a day at the end of each trip around the
sun that we reward ourselves with an extra day (leap day) on every fouth
year.  But because the extra days accumulation isn't even (as it's truly 
.2562 days instead of .25) there's still a remainder at the end of four 
years.  After four years, 4 X .2562 days, we get a leap day of the 
accumulations of a extra 24 hour period of time.  But it's not exactly 1 
day even, but  1.0248 days.  Or 1 day 35 minutes 42.72 minutes.  It takes 
40.32258064516 *leap days* of accumulations to give us an extra day (which 
is about 160+ years of time being elapsed) to which even that isn't a whole 
day but about a third of a day more.... than what has been accumulated.  

By the time you add a day here on the normal leap years and on years 
evenly divisible by 400, and not have a leap year on the years on the
even "100" mark (to give back the days accumulated), it all evens out
pretty well.

To me, this stresses how hard it would have been for anyone to
keep track of which day is *the seventh* day to rest as we take
and lose days all the time.  A few days here, a few days there...
give some, take some, lose some, earn some... all the while ......
my head is now dizzy and I got to stop this nonsense.

Bro "math geekbert" Tyler
--
Bro Tyler Nally 
Owner Higher-Fire Oneness Apostolic E-mailing list
<tnally@iquest.net> <tgnally@prairienet.org> <tn@higherfire.org>

To e-mail all list owner/moderators, send e-mail to ...

   higher-fire-request@prairienet.org

To e-mail the higher-fire list with a message, send e-mail to ...

   higher-fire@prairienet.org

The Higher-Fire listprocessor's e-addresses for changes and queries ...

        listproc@prairienet.org 

 a) ... To Subscribe               SUB HIGHER-FIRE Your Name
 b) ... To UnSubscribe             UNSUB HIGHER-FIRE
 c) ... To Postpone Mail           SET HIGHER-FIRE MAIL POSTPONE
 d) ... To Resume Mail             SET HIGHER-FIRE MAIL ACK
 e) ... To Change to H-F Digests   SET HIGHER-FIRE MAIL DIGEST
 f) ... To Check H-F Settings      SET HIGHER-FIRE 
 g) ... To Review H-F Subscription REVIEW HIGHER-FIRE
H-F Homepage     :  http://www.prairienet.org/upci/h-f.html
H-F WWW Archives :  http://www.higherfire.org
H-F Nettiquette  :  http://www.higherfire.org/netiq.html
H-F F.A.Q.       :  http://www.higherfire.org/FAQ.html
H-F KJV Bible    :  http://www.higherfire.org/kjv
H-F QuickTour    :  http://www.prairienet.org/~tgnally/HigherFireTour.html
H-F Questionaire :  http://www.prairienet.org/upci/questions.html

H-F IRC Channel  :  #higher-fire on a Undernet.org server

  "...prefer to hear educated blessings preach than ignorant blessing!"
  - Bro Robert Jay Brown III