December 25th is 48 hours long!!

Dear Friends,

People frequently question how on Earth Santa could possibly make all his deliveries in one 24-hour period of time. I questioned him about it. This is the gist of what he had to say in one of several conversations.

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"From my point of view December 25th is 48 hours long, not 24. Let me use a hypothetical example to explain.

Pretend that you are standing where the International Date Line and the Equator intersect. Got that? Good!

Now pretend that at the very instant a day begins you start traveling from East to West at the same rate of speed as the Earth’s rotation. The Earth’s circumference at the Equator is about 24,901.55 miles. It takes approximately 24 hours for the Earth to complete one revolution. Thus you would be traveling from East to West at approximately 1,037.56 miles per hour or 17.29 miles per minute.

If you did this, from your perspective, time would stand still. In twenty four hours you would have circled the globe and be back at the International Date Line, but as far as you were concerned the day would still be beginning.

Now pretend that at that point you just stand still. It will progressively get later and later in the day for an additional 24 hours making a total of 48 hours.

To take maximum advantage of this situation in making deliveries, you would quarter back and forth. North Pole, South pole, North Pole, South pole while traveling from East to West at an average speed of one half that of the earth’s rotation or about 8.646 miles per minute. Using this schedule it would take 24 hours to travel from the International Date Line to Greenwich just outside London, on the other side of the Earth, arriving at noon, and then another 24 hours to travel from Greenwich the rest of the way around the world back to the International Date Line, arriving at midnight.

With such an itinerary it would be difficult staying on schedule, particularly over some of the more densely populated areas such as China and portions of Russia. Of course you could make up time over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Staying on schedule would not be the biggest problem. Orientation would be even more important. Can you imagine what would happen if I got disoriented and started going in the wrong direction? Everything would be reversed. And 48 hours worth of deliveries would have to be made in just 12 hours."

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The thought of such a catastrophic event got Santa so upset we had to discontinue our conversation.

I’ll be in touch next month with more insights from Santa.

Santa's Friend

Glenn

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