What you're going to read is just a curiosity I thought in this last days. It is based on physical principles.
The values we use in our common days for the Earth's translation and rotation movements are:
1 year -> 365 days
1 day -> 24 hours
But these are only approached values so that it is more easy for everyone to be oriented. The real values are just a little bit different, but enough to make you think in some things.
. . . . .
Talking about Earth's translation movement the real correspondence is that 1 year -> 365,25 days. This is the most known situation, and you easily notice it because every four years you add a day to that year's February; that's what we call "leap year"¹.
The other phenomenon is the Earth's rotation movement which the real value is that 1 complete rotation -> 0,997 days. Now, by doing some simple calculations you will easily notice some things. Here are those calcs:
1(day) - 0,997(day) = 0,003 day
1 day ......... 24 hours
0,003 day ...... x hours
x = 0,072 hours
1 hour ......... 60 minutes
0,072 hour ..... x minutes
x = 4,32 minutes
1 minute ..... 60 seconds
0,32 minutes ..... x seconds
x = 19,2 seconds
TOTAL: 4minutes 19 seconds.
So, concluding, a normal day should have 23h 55m 41s, and it has 24h.
This made me think.. didn't it make you too? ;b
I keep wondering what to do with those 4 minutes :D
leap year¹: A year in the Gregorian calendar having 366 days, with the extra day, February 29, intercalated to compensate for the quarter-day difference between an ordinary year and the astronomical year.