If Earth makes one complete rotation on its axis every 23 hours and 56 minutes, how does day and night not being flipped on our clocks after six months? (6monthx30dayx4min/60=12hour)

Question

And why leap year happens once per 4 years only to address this?

In: 1081

Answer 1

The earth makes a full 360 rotation every 1436 minutes. However, it takes the sun 1440 minutes to return to the same location in the sky as the previous day.

This happens because the earth rotates about its axis but also orbits the sun: every day, it moves about 2.6 million km. For this reason, to us, relative to the stars, the sun appears to move in the sky, slightly eastward.

So a day isn’t measure why a full rotation of the planet, but by how long it takes for the sun to return to the same longitude.