How long is a year?

OK... I was in Voice class today and was talking with a guy about leap years. He wanted to know why a leap year was every 4 years but only every 4th century. This means that in every 400 years there are 97 leap years.

I got out a pen and paper and worked out that if leap years only occur 97 percent of the times that we expect them to occur, then the extra day we get every 4 years must really be only 97 percent of a day.

With pen in hand, scribbling furiously, converting from decimal fractions back to minutes, I arrived at the following figure...

One earth year is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds... approximately.

So as soon as I finished work, I went online to check... and you can read here what controversy the term "year" entails.

Apparently the mean tropical year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds.

NOT BAD, EH!

Signed,
A self-confessed geek.
Glennjamin