Year 2000 will be a leap year, because the rule of 400 states that century years are leap years IF they are divisable by 400 ie. 1700 was NOT a leap year.
ie.
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IS THE YEAR 2000 A LEAP YEAR?
The year 2000 will be a leap year. Century years (like 1900 and 2000)
are leap years only if they are evenly divisible by 400. therefore, 1700,
1800 and 1900 were not leap years, but the year 2000 will be a leap
year.
To understand this, you need to know why leap years are necessary in
the first place. Leap years are necessary because the actual length of a
year is 365.242 days, not 365 days, as commonly stated. Therefore, on
years that are evenly divisible by 4 (like 1992, for example) an extra day
is added to the calendar on February 29th. However, since the year is
slightly less than 365.25 days long, adding an extra day every 4 years
results in about 3 extra days being added over a period of 400 years. For
this reason, only 1 out of every 4 century years is considered as a leap
year.
Re: Secondary clocks
With regards to clocks, I have no knowledge about a secondary clock problem. Many devices need to know the day of the week ie. elevator, traffic lights etc. but they are not programmed with the year ie. ever 24 hours they simply go to the next day. Many of these "clocks" are simply internal counters as well ie 86400 1 second clicks = increment the day. |
