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One of our grandsons recently came to visit us and I had to take him back home on Thursday, February 27, 2020.
On our two and a half hour drive we talked about a lot of things. He had lots of questions and even some theories of his own about things I, honestly, haven’t given a lot of thought to.
We talked about the “Dark Side of the Moon”.
I told him it was a classic Pink Floyd song and he laughed. He said, “No, PaPa, the dark side of the moon in the sky.” I knew what he meant, but was really testing him to see if he knew who the classic rock band, Pink Floyd was. I was impressed that he did know.
So I tried to explain to him that the moon does rotate on its own axis while it is orbiting the earth. It only appears that we can’t see the other side, “the dark side” because of the time it takes for the moon to orbit earth, every 27 days or so, and the time it takes for the moon to rotate on its own axis, also about 27 days – something called synchronous rotation. So it only appears that we never see the other or “dark side” of the moon, but we do.
But enough on the moon – What I really wanted to talk about is Leap Year.
To clarify – I am certainly not an expert in astronomy, but do remember some things from the classes I took in college and during flight school years ago.
We kept the radio off and he never once got on his phone – we actually talked. We discussed a few other things and then, knowing that Leap Day was just around the corner, I asked him if he knew how long it took the earth to revolve around the sun. He said 365 days, the answer everyone knows. I said, “Wrong. It really takes approximately 365 and ¼ days for a complete revolution.” I went on and did my best to explain to him.
I told him that it doesn’t take the earth exactly 365 days to go around the sun.
In fact, it is just shy of 365 and ¼ days and that that even varies ever so slightly. I didn’t get into the fact that a day as we know it isn’t even really 24 hours, but slightly longer. I didn’t want to confuse him any more.
So I explained that in order to account for the approximate ¼ day every year, Leap Day was added to the calendar on February 29th every four years to make up for the extra 6 hours or so every year it takes the earth to revolve around our sun. This has been going on for centuries and dates back to the days of Julius Caesar. There’s a lot more to it, but I simplified it for him and I think he understood what I was telling him.
We talked some more and I told him he could use this simple and rarely thought about fact to trick his friends, that is if it ever came up in conversation. I knew it probably wouldn’t, but if it did he could dazzle them with his knowledge of how a year is actually measured. I hope I inspired him to learn more about this and the things he wanted to discuss.
Thanks for reading.
Paul
