Santa Claus: The Stretchy Santa Theory
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Have you ever wondered how Santa Claus can visit well over one billion households in one Christmas night? Impossible, you say. You're wrong. Not only is it possible, it's very much plausible.
The distance from the North Pole to the South Pole is around 18,000 kilometres. Each Christmas Day, Santa stretches himself to 18,000 kilometres long, places his head at the North Pole, and his feet at the South Pole. He stays in that position, and the world rotates underneath him at the stroke of midnight.
In this way, he can visit every household on earth.
We estimate that Santa displaces about 0.15 cubic metres of space, with clothes and hat. (If you ever get Santa in your bath, tell us how much he really does displace!) Assuming Santa is cylindrical and that the curvature of the earth is trivial, he is calculated to be about 0.0103 centimetres across, or about one-and-a-half times the thickness of a human hair.
So, if you see something like a very thick hair pass overhead on Christmas Day, you'll know who it is.
The distance from the North Pole to the South Pole is around 18,000 kilometres. Each Christmas Day, Santa stretches himself to 18,000 kilometres long, places his head at the North Pole, and his feet at the South Pole. He stays in that position, and the world rotates underneath him at the stroke of midnight.
In this way, he can visit every household on earth.
We estimate that Santa displaces about 0.15 cubic metres of space, with clothes and hat. (If you ever get Santa in your bath, tell us how much he really does displace!) Assuming Santa is cylindrical and that the curvature of the earth is trivial, he is calculated to be about 0.0103 centimetres across, or about one-and-a-half times the thickness of a human hair.
So, if you see something like a very thick hair pass overhead on Christmas Day, you'll know who it is.
