Question 468214: The years 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000 are consecutive leap years. Make a conjecture about leap years
Answer by moshiz08(60)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! One thing these numbers have in common is that they are divisible by 4. What is your best guess for the next leap year on that list?
Answer: 2004 is the next leap year.
Fun Fact 1: Technically, it is not true that EVERY year divisible by 4 is a leap year. The exception is that years divisible by 100 are leap years only if they are also divisible by 400. In other words, 1600, 2000, and 2400 are leap years, but 1500, 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200 are not leap years, even though they are divisible by 4. However, you would not have been able to infer this from the given problem, so the best conjecture is that they occur every four years.
Fun Fact 2: Do you know how to determine if a number is divisible by 4? You just need to look at the number formed by the last 2 digits. If this is divisible by 4, then the whole number is divisible by 4. For example, the last two digits of 1916 are 16, which is divisible by 4, so the number 1916 is divisible by 4. Can you figure out why this always works? Hint: 100 is divisible by 4.
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