Christmas by the Numbers

To wrap up (see what we did there) the year in time for the holidays, here are some fun Christmas numbers that you can bring up at holiday parties.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas, thanks to time zones and the rotation of the earth.  This works out to 822.6 visits per second.

His sleigh would have to travel at 650 miles per second, which is 3,000 times the speed of light!

If Santa was carrying just a medium-sized Lego set to every child he visits, his sleigh would be carrying 321,300 tons.

If he was to eat a cookie in each of the 112 million homes in the US, he would consume 3 billion calories in one night!

And finally, no matter how carefully you pack Christmas lights, they're almost certainly going to tangle.  For any cord longer than 2 meters, physicists have proven that knots are almost mathematically guaranteed.

Have a very merry Christmas!

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