Where do those extra four minutes go every day?

Question

The Earth fully rotates in 23 hours and 56 minutes. Where do those extra four minutes go??

I know the answer is supposedly leap day, but I still don’t understand it from a daily time perspective.

I have to be up early for my job, which right now sucks because it’s dark out that early. So every day I’ve been checking my weather app to see when the sun is going to rise, and every day its a minute or two earlier because we’re coming out of winter. But how the heck does that work if there’s a missing four minutes every night?? Shouldn’t the sun be rising even earlier, or later? And how does it not add up to the point where noon is nighttime??

It hurts my head so much please help me understand.

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

23 hours and 56 minutes is how long it takes the Earth to make one rotation relative to the rest of the universe. However, while it is doing that, it also makes 1/365 of a revolution around the Sun. In order to face the Sun in the same direction as it did the previous day, it has to rotate for 1/365 of a rotation, which takes 4 minutes.