Volume 9 Issue 6
Have you ever considered the logistics involved in Jolly Old Saint Nick’s task of delivering presents to every kid around the world in just one night? Well, Larry Silverberg, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University, has a few theories!
With approximately 200 million children spread over 200 million square miles, Santa needs to cover 122 million miles. Assuming that each household averages 2.67 children, there are about 75 million homes to visit in a 24-hour timespan. To travel so great a distance in such a short time, Santa’s sleigh would need to move at an average speed of 5,083,000 mph. It would be difficult, but not impossible, considering the speed of light travels 130 times faster!
Another possible theory involves the deployment of multiple sleighs, about 750 to be exact. If Santa divided his workload among his elves, employing an army of jetpack powered sleighs, each one would only need to travel about 80 mph to complete their portion of the job. This sounds like a much more realistic scenario!
Additional time saving tools might include taking advantage of various time zones around the world or making use of relativity clouds to manipulate time. The bottom line is that Santa Claus has to travel a great distance at unrealistic speeds to fulfill his gift giving duties.
Luckily for us, we don’t have to face the daunting task of traveling millions of miles to complete our holiday honey-do list. We don’t even have to leave Saline County in order to fill our sleighs with the hottest gifts this Christmas! Our community is blessed with a wide variety of locally owned businesses that allow us to shop nearby. Not only is it less stressful and more convenient, but our community also benefits in other ways. For every $100 you spend at a local business, $46 is circulated back into the local economy. Who doesn’t like the idea of their tax dollars coming back to the community, helping to finance our police and fire departments, as well as our schools?
In this issue of Saline County Lifestyles, we are bringing you our #shoplocal – Holiday Gift Guide in an effort to take full advantage of all the wonderful amenities our community has to offer. We hope to make this Christmas a little less stressful and a lot more jolly. Your town. Your life. Your magazine.
Click on the cover to see the virtual edition.
