The day of the year arrives in the that santa claus He drinks his hot chocolate, downloads the vaccination certificate on his mobile – for whatever may happen – and rides his gleaming sleigh to travel the world and deliver gifts to the millions of children who sleep hoping to find something low Christmas tree. On a human level it’s a mission impossible, but suppose Santa Claus can do it. How fast would you have to travel to complete this mission successfully?
For calculate kilometers per hour that he would have to reach with his gigantic sleigh and, of course, with the help of his reindeer, it is necessary to take into account different factors. Among them, the number of children in the world, the number of houses, the surface of the Earth or the time Santa has to complete the mission.
- How long does Santa have to deliver all the gifts? Let’s say Santa starts his workday at 8:00 pm on December 24, and ends at 6:00 am on the 25th. This gives him a total of 9 hours to deliver the gifts. Fortunately, we must bear in mind that there are different time zones, and this works in your favor. They add up 32 hours to make all deliveries.
- How many children will receive a gift from Santa Claus? Suppose Santa has to deliver gifts to 1.9 billion children that celebrate Christmas in the world. Fortunately, many families have more than one child, so the number of houses that Santa Claus must visit is less, about 1,000 million homes if we calculate two children per family.
- How many kilometers would Santa Claus have to do? There are homes scattered all over the world, even in the most remote places. Therefore, Santa Claus has to travel approximately 510 million kilometers of the Earth’s surface.
Santa Claus will have to go faster than the Falcon 9 rocket
Taking into account these parameters and following the calculations made by some users of Reddit, Santa Claus would have to travel at a maximum speed of 32 million kilometers per hour. That is, about 800 times faster than the Falcon 9, a rocket that reaches 39,600 km / h.
The speed, of course, can change if we take into account other factors. For example, that there are many children who will not receive their gift because they have misbehaved. Arnold Pompos, from Purdue University, in the United States, calculation speed considering that there are about 200 million children who have been good. In this case, and taking into account that the distance that Santa Claus has to travel is less (about 160 million km), Santa would have to travel at a speed of 4,705,882 kilometers per hour. Of course, without taking into account other factors, such as the weight of the gifts or the delays in taking the milk with cookies.