Leaping through history

Heather Ainsley ECB Publishing, Inc. We all know that it takes our beloved planet 365 days to gracefully orbit our favorite star: the sun! But that's not completely true... In fact, it takes this beautiful globe a little less than 365.25 days to orbit the sun, which means there is about a quarter of a day's difference (around six hours) in the revolution. This means that once every four years, we add a full day to our calendar year – we call this a leap year – to make up for the difference, as a single day every four years is easier to keep track of than six hours each year. So once every four years, our revolution around the sun takes 366 days. You may be thinking, 'why do we do th