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

Imagine you have a toy car that goes around a big circle track. The track has a sun in the center. Your toy car represents Earth. As it goes around the sun (which takes one year), it also spins around like a top (which is one day).

Now, the spinning (one day) isn’t exactly 24 hours like we see on our clocks. It’s a tiny bit less – 23 hours and 56 minutes. So, you might think after a while, our days and nights would get all mixed up, right?

Here’s the trick: while our toy car (Earth) is spinning, it’s also moving a little bit around the track (around the sun). Because of this little movement, by the time it completes its spin, it needs an extra 4 minutes to face the sun in the same way again, which makes our days 24 hours.

Now, about leap years! Our toy car (Earth) doesn’t take exactly 365 days to go around the sun track; it takes a little bit more than that. So, every 4 years, we add an extra day (February 29th) to make up for that extra time. This way, our calendars and seasons don’t get out of sync!

So, thanks to Earth’s journey around the sun and its spinning, our days stay right where they should be, and everything works out!