Math
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Location: Henry Clay | This is in the NSTA newsletter
Santa Science
It's that time of year again-for science educators to hotly debate how on Earth the man in the red suit accomplishes his feats every Christmas. To read the classic interpretation, visit <http://science.nsta.org/nstaexpress/nstaexpress_2006_11_27_santa.htm>.
or
http://www.chainreactionbicycles.com/santaclaus.htm
The Science of Santa Claus
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children he has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh, and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN times their normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh-to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison-this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
This analysis can be traced back as far as 1990, and has been attributed to a lot of different people. It's found all over the web, with many different "original" authors claiming it as their own. It awaits the writing of a better conclusion, however, since we all know that Santa Claus is not only very much alive, but does, in fact, accomplish everything set out above.
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The 12 Days of Christmas Gift
12 Days of Christmas Functions.pdf (13KB - 564 downloads)
