How Long Would It Really Take Santa to Deliver Gifts?
Check this out: Larry Silverberg, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University, asked his students to figure out how long it would take Santa Claus to deliver gifts to every kid on earth. So here's what they came up with (this is crazy):
First Scenario:
There are around 200 million kids spread over 200 million square miles. Because each household has 2.67 children, there are about 75 million homes to visit and the average distance between homes is about 1.63 miles, so Santa needs to cover 122 million miles in 24 hours!
To cover that much distance, Santa would have to have a pretty fast sleigh - one that could travel an average speed of 5,083,000 mph. Professor Silverberg argues that this could be possible because the sleigh would have to travel 130 times more slowly than the speed of light, which is 300 million meters per second, or 669,600,000 mph. Because something already moves that quickly, it would be difficult, but not impossible, for Santa to travel at 5,083,000 mph.
Whatever you say Professor, I was lost once we started talking math.
Second Scenario:
Supposedly that the Professor and his students to be more realistic. (Hey guys, we are talking about Santa remember?) Relativity clouds. Relativity clouds, based on relative physics, would allow Santa to stretch time like a rubber band and give him months to deliver gifts, while only a few minutes pass for the rest of us.
Third Scenario:
If Santa and his elves used 750 sleighs to deliver the gifts and, using relativity physics, it would take roughly six Santa months (only 24 hours for us humans), each sleigh only needs to travel about 80 mph, a much more realistic scenario.
Relativity physics - huh?
Merry Christmas!