Lets Recap
I have several pages giving a rebuttal is that the Solar Day and Solar Time is unconnected to the Solar Year. There are 24 hours in a Solar Day and 356.24 Solar Days in a Solar Year. Where does the .24 come from? The argument I am hearing is that the two are "unconnected". There are posts with arguments that the two are "arbitrary" and the names Solar Day and Solar Year coincidental. Lets work with that.
I stopped reading here, and I haven't scrolled down to see if anyone else has responded.
Tom,
I can appreciate if you feel kind of like you're being ganged up on, and I don't want to contribute to what might feel like a mob. I think we're all independently trying to explain to you the same thing, though maybe in different ways. And there's obviously history with some of you that is leading others to respond more caustically.
I, for one, don't like to discuss things that way. But I do wish I could help you work through the question, but your recap is not right, and you can't use that as a place from which to start to "work with."
You seem to expect something to be true that isn't. These solar days, solar years, etc. are not "arbitrary." They aren't "unconnected." They're just not connected in a manner that you consider whole.
1 rotation of the earth with respect to the sun is a solar day. That's not arbitrary. It's 1. 1 day. 1 solar day.
1 orbit around the sun is a solar year. That's not arbitrary. It's 1. 1 year. 1 solar year.
The solar day happens 365 times in 1 solar year, but then there's a fractional period of rotation that must occur before the orbit of 1 solar year is complete. That's not arbitrary. It's measurable. It's "arbitrary" I suppose, but with good reason, that you might want to choose a starting point for measuring the year at an equinox or solstice. In this case, via convention (call it arbitrary) we use the vernal equinox. But the number of earth rotations (relative to the sun) during the length of that orbit to the next vernal equinox is not arbitrary. They happen naturally, are measurable, and the solar day doesn't line up with the solar year in a whole number. The earth reaches a point in its orbit around the sun a little before the vernal equinox when it completes its 365th solar day rotation.
That's where the extra time is coming from. The earth rotates a little more while it has to complete that orbit, returning to the point of the vernal equinox.
Calling things "arbitrary," "coincidental" and "unconnected" indicates you aren't absorbing what's being explained. Some things, like words or units of measurement might be "arbitrary" or based on something that is a matter of convenience or convention, but what we are measuring aren't. And you can't consider what's being measured as "unconnected" just because the way we measure doesn't use units that divide evenly as integers. Fractions are a way of life in the world.
I hope that helps. (If I'm redundant and someone else has already made that point, I apologize, but I hope you aren't being resistant just because you feel defensive or ganged up on.)