Santa Speed! | How does Santa Deliver Presents in One Night?

Ever wonder how Santa delivers all those presents to the whole world in one night? Or how about how fast Santa's sleigh flies? Let's do our best to answer those questions.

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Song: Jingle Bells (Instrumental Jazz) by E's Jammy Jams

Research notes:
Let me know if you have other questions!

Thanks for stopping by, this is 2 minute classroom and today we answering the age old question How does Santa visit so many houses in one night?

Before we hypothesize about his methods, let’s figure out how many houses Santa visits and just how fast he is.

To simplify the math, we are going to just focus on North America.

Pew research poll found that 90% of the united states celebrates Christmas. You can find links to all my research below if your curious.

We are going to assume that this 90% figure is consistent with all of North America.

North America has a total population of 580 million. Multiply this number by 90% and we get 522 million, our total population that celebrates Christmas.

But Santa visits houses, not people, so we need to figure out how many households in North America celebrate Christmas.

These are the average household sizes for the three largest countries in NA.

The United States is 2.6
Mexico is 3.7
And Canada is 2.3

When we average these together taking their relative populations into consideration we get an average household size of 2.86.

So 522 million people divided by 2.86 per household gives about 182 million households in NA that celebrate christmas.

The vast majority of these households fall within 4 time zones. Eastern, Central, Mountian, and Pacific.

Now let’s assume Santa covers all of North America in 6 hours, that may sound like a long time, but with the time zones, he could start at 1 am and be done by 3 am.

So, for Santa to cover 182 million households in 6 hours, he must work at a rate of 118 milliseconds per house or 8425 houses per second. No wonder no one has ever caught him, he’s basically lightening. That’s assuming he does it all by himself at high speed.

But let’s discuss some other possibilities.

Perhaps santa’s elves help him deliver presents to the houses. This way Santa would actually visit a much smaller number of houses and could actually spend time setting presents under the tree. However, it would be a little disappointing to learn that Santa never actually came to your house on Christmas.

Maybe Santa can replicate himself, like Loki, and send his clones to all the houses to deliver presents. If he did it this way, he could hit all the houses at the same time! However, he would have to replicate the reindeer and sleigh too.

The last possibility is that Santa can stop time. This way, he could spend as long as he wants in each house and take his time. If this is the case, then Christmas really does last all year for Santa.

So which one do you think is most likely, let me know in the comments below. Or if you have some other ideas, I would love to hear those too!

Be sure to tune in next year when we discuss the physics of how Santa fits through the chimney.

Finally, If you enjoyed this video you can find more fun and educational content on my YouTube channel and Facebook page.

Have a Merry Christmas and never stop learning.

[rolijain]

Beautiful video. My son said Santa can stretch time. He can warp and can be not seen because he is traveling at speed of light. I feel my 10 year old knows Santa 🤶
I think Santa appears when we close our eyes and look inside . He is always there to help know who we are

[keilithompson]

He can duplicate himself like Loki lol

[drummertb]

My hypothesis is he uses velocity induced time dilation, traveling near the speed of light in order to essentially slow the flow of our time relative to his. In this way he can cover vast distances in one night. Or maybe he just stops time.. though the latter is not as plausible. Either way he can accomplish something that to us seems impossible. That's just the magic of Christmas though. 😁

[sverednrvz]

Hey I’m watching this in 2019 and I still believe santa is real even though I’m 12

[fireinfused]

Santa has a time bubble around him where time is stopped on the outside but not on the inside, this is why people can encounter santa(rarely) it’s like a mass za worldoro but with the entire world. He could also turn it on and off. Stopped time doesn’t count in real time so nobody notices stopped time.

[chiyo_chiyoiiiii]

I don't believe in Santa! 7 years old me believed in Santa! But 12 years old me(Now) don't believe in Santa:)

When I was 7 years old I just believed in Santa & at night I used to write my wish in a paper and keep it in my socks! 🤭🤭 And I just believe that Santa will come surely and will give me presents according to my wish:)


But when I became 10 years old I came to know that santa was not real he was my Pa❤️🤭😂:)
So I don't believe in Santa 🎅
But nowadays a question arises on my mind again n again that, 'Is there Santa Claus 🎅 in real life!? '

🤔🙄

[DenMacho]

He stops time because I once got up to use the restroom and I saw him doing magic and I was moving slow to the restroom

[potatobeard]

Taking my evidence from arthur christmas that it took about 3 minutes and 29 seconds for them to deliver presents to one city/village and the estimate of the amount of cities ans towns there are in the world (2.5Million) i came to the conclusion it would take about 15 years or 1.5 decades for santa to deliver his presents. Bare in mind i got this number by researching arthur christmas and i kinda rushed my math

[Twisted_bonnies_world_]

My theory is that he delivers presents by days not by 1 night cause I got my gifts last
Year like in the 20th

[TseTsEditz]

ummmm i dont know if i know how much presents are there

[potatobeard]

I'm just wondering what the decimal in a average household