The above picture is one we might see at this time of year. We hear the story that he travels around the world in 24 hours while dropping presents off with all the children in the world. Its a wonderful tale but have you every wondered what that would entail?
To figure out the mathematics of such an endeavor you need the following information:
1. The area of the land mass is 57,259 square miles.
2. There are about 57 million children world wide under the age of 12.
3. 24 hours will need to be converted to seconds so as to make the distribution rate more accurate.
With this information, you can have students calculate how fast Santa has to distribute gifts to cover the whole world in the time period.
If you wanted to add another element to it, have students figure out where Santa would be delivering gifts first and the direction he would have to travel. If you want to add another layer to the calculations, have them figure out a path that would work for the actual world wide distribution.
Have a wonderful holiday weekend.
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