Marcel van der Veer • Science • Technology • Education
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Actually, we shouldn't do this just before Christmas, but let's rationally analyze the story that Santa Claus would visit every household to bring presents. Today, the Netherlands has 8.4 million domestic establishments. For simplicity's sake, let's assume that every family lives in a mid-terrace house with a typical plot size of 12×12 meters. If Santa Claus were to visit every home, he'd have to travel over 100,000 kilometers. And if he were to do that in a single day, his average speed would be some 4,200 kilometers per hour. The packages he'd be tossing while riding would then be dangerous projectiles that would severely damage your property upon impact.
Of course, we don't all live in terraced houses; many of us live in apartments. The figures above should therefore be considered an estimated upper bound. To estimate a lower bound, let's assume we all live in a single apartment building with 8.4 million floors, with a average floor height of 2.40 meters. Then Santa Claus would only have to travel about 20,000 kilometers to get from the ground floor to the roof, and to do that in a single day, he would have to ride at the speed of a regular airliner, around 830 kilometers per hour. So, it's still advisable to dodge strewn gifts.
Since a reindeer can run at most 80 kilometers in an hour, Santa Claus needs between 10 and 75 helpers, unrealistically assuming a reindeer doesn't need to rest. I am afraid that the probability of Santa visiting you personally is therefore less than 1 in 10, more likely 1 in 100. The same goes for Santa's Dutch colleague Sinterklaas, although his horse is somewhat slower than a reindeer.
I suggest you don't explain these calculations to your children. What would be fun, however, is to estimate where you'd end up if every household decorated a Christmas tree, all of which would be laid out in a row after Epiphany. Since the typical Dutch Christmas tree stands 2 meters tall you'd cover 16,800 kilometers, roughly from Amsterdam to Sydney, Australia. If Santa Claus had to cover that distance, it would take him at best 8 days and 18 hours, but that's beside the point.
I've been told that when a string of Christmas lights is longer than a few meters, then mathematically the probability of tangling approaches certainty. Hence, it's not my fault that I spend a few hours each year desperately trying to untangle it all. But if we were to hang the recommended 10 meters of LED lights on every 2-meter-tall tree, we could circle the Earth twice with all those cords after the holidays. That must look quite cozy from the Moon, if only we could find the necessary 8.4 million electrical outlets around the equator, that's about one every 5 meters.
Now my head spins. I'm going to lard my turkey. Happy holidays!