Who we are:
We are the geocaching club at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL). The club was formed in 2006, and we are group of dedicated cachers who enjoy all that the hobby has to offer. JHUAPL is, by the way, where satellite navigation all got started!
Some science:
Leap Years are needed to keep our modern day Gregorian calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds – to circle once around the Sun. This is called a tropical year.
However, the Gregorian calendar has only 365 days in a year, so if we didn't add a day on February 29 nearly every 4 years, we would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by approximately 24 days! This happened in the Julian calendar, which was in use until the Gregorian was introduced.
Independent of calendar adjustments, there is a more direct adjustment we occasionally make with time: the leap second. Earth's roatation is gradually slowing down ( about 1.4 milliseconds per day per century) due to the breaking action of the tides. What this means is that the mean solar day is changing. We measure time most accurately using atomic clocks, which measure the rate of decay of radioactive elements. These are the clocks used to keep GPS satellites synchronized in time. As the earth slows, there is an offset between measured atomic time and the mean solar day, requiring the insertion of a leap second. The last leap second was introduced in UTC on 30 June 2015 at UTC 23:59:60 More on that here:
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html
Who should come:
Anyone! Everyone! Especially you! All are welcome, no matter if you have one find under your belt, or thousands. Events are great opportunities to meet fellow cachers, swap stories, meet the folks whose hides have been tormenting you, and generally have fun.
Event details:
Groundspeak is offering 2 new souvenirsassociated with Leap Day 2016: one for attending an event on 29FEB2016 (like this one!), and one for finding any sort of geocache at all between 27 and 29 February. Details can be found here:
https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2016/01/when-there-are-366-days-in-a-year/
If you don't know what a Groundspeak souvenir is, you may want to check out the link below, so you can find out why you are in such dire need of additional pixels:
More on souveniers: http://www.geocaching.com/about/souvenirs.aspx
But hey, don't blame the pixels, they end up wherever we place 'em! Maybe you care about souvenirs, maybe you don't, but show up anyway! Maybe this is a day you need a find on the calendar; maybe your working on a streak; maybe you just need a break from work and an early lunch. Well, we're here for you, come on out and join us!
We are hosting a flash mob meet and greet near our campus, come out and meet us and enjoy a few minutes of camaraderie with your fellow cachers, gain your Groundspeak souvenir for attending an event on this date, and discuss the physics of leap years, leap seconds and precession!.
As soon as you arrive look for the guy with a pony tail wearing a white cowboy hat (Zekester if you already know him). He'll have the log.
There will be a group photo before we break. A photo of all of us leaping. So bring pogo sticks!
Parking:
There is parking to be had nearby, either behind the nearby (north side, or event side) white building that is up for lease (please use marked spots), or at the Thai Sophia Institute. Please be respectful of our neighbors, and do not block either the driveway to Thai Sophia, or Montpelier Rd. There is a JHUAPL shuttle that regularly uses Montpelier Rd. that needs to continue to transit.
Hope to see you there!