So, firstly, we need to work out what speed Santa is going to travel at in kilometres per hour.

Let’s make sure we’re realistic, and keep speed below 100,000 kilometres per hour. We have to make sure we don’t damage the gifts.

Then, we need some facts:

How far away are you from Santa in kilometres?
How heavy is your present in kilograms?
How much do you think Santa pays for electricity? (in cents per kilowatt hour)

Now we work out how long it will take Santa to reach you in hours by taking your distance and dividing it by Santa‘s speed.

For example, if you live 6,000 km away from the North Pole and Santa travels at 600 kilometres – it will take Santa 10 hours to reach you.

Let's work out how much energy Santa might need.

Time for a calculation. This should be easier now that you know how long Santa has to travel.

You take the number of hours, multiplied by the mass of your present, now multiply this number by your speed in kilometres per hour squared, and finally multiplied by the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour.

You’re going to get a very large number and you have to divide this by 26 million.

Once you do you’ll have an approximate cost in dollars for how much Santa might need to deliver your present to you.

So the formula looks like:

Hours of travel) * (mass of present in kg) * (Santa’s speed squared ) * cost electricity in cents divided by ( 26,000,000)

Don’t forget this cost is assuming only one present is delivered and Santa could save a lot of energy taking a lot of presents together.

Have fun.

This article was first published on Pursuit. Read the original article.

Dr

Matteo Volpi

Research Fellow, High Power X-Band Accelerators

School of Physics

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