The Science behind Santa Claus

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MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - 'Twas a few nights before Christmas, and Santa Claus is prepping for the busiest evening of his year, but have you ever thought about how he gets it all done in just one night? Well, Old Saint Nick gets by with a little help from math and science!

First - you have to think about how he travels across the entire world in just one night...

With over 600 million child in the world to visit, Santa has roughly 31 hours to move east to west so he can reach everyone, while using the rotation of the Earth and time zone changes to his advantage. If we assume there are 3-4 per household and Santa works non-stop, he would visit 1,540 homes per second!

Now that we have calculated how many stops Santa needs to make, it is time to calculate the speed of the sleigh that is necessary to reach all the households in less than 31 hours. To get the job done, Santa would have to travel more than 215 million kilometers. To put it into perspective, this velocity is close to the speed of light!

This means that in order to reach such a fast speed, Santa Claus must have a group of highly qualified scientists that have developed some kind of unknown technology that we are unaware of...

See - there is a lot that goes into Santa's busy night, and that's not even considering the fact he might run into some bumpy weather. Hopefully he has his WSFA weather app handy! Whether you stay local this Christmas or plan on traveling to see family and friends, make sure you keep your app handy so you can track the forecast no matter where you go!

Merry Christmas everyone!