Columnist Allan Grey crunches Santa's Christmas Eve numbers

I may have mentioned this before, but I was pretty much a failure at school, one of those elitist grammar schools way back in the early 1960s, writes columnist Allan Grey.

I left with just two O-levels, mathematics and chemistry, even managing to get mathematics a year early. However, from that point on numbers and mathematical analysis has always piqued my interest.

Like the other day, listening to the news about the unrest in China, and in particular at the Apple iPhone factory in Zhengzhou. Two numbers piqued my interest, 0 and 200,000. In a country of 1.4 billion people, or 18 per cent of the planet’s population, their esteemed leader wants ZERO covid - that’s right, none, zilch, nought, or nowt if you come from God’s Own Country just to the east of Lancashire - which would be utterly amazing were it ever to happen.

The 200,000 is even more interesting. That’s the number of employees making iPhones at the Foxconn factory, where 500,000 iPhones are made each day, every day. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronic equipment with an annual revenue of 175 billion US dollars, or at an exchange rate of 1.23, just a fraction less than the 155 billion British pounds the NHS spends every year. Now there’s a few mind-blowing numbers for you.

I’d always believed that our NHS was the world’s third largest employer, but it’s not. However it does come ahead of Foxconn in ninth place with 1.7 million employees, just 43 of whom are currently practicing GPs and one of whom is chief executive. Anyone know the name of the lady who runs the show? No? Thought not.

Ahead of the NHS and at number one is the US Defence Department with 2.9 million employees, and facing them off, the People’s Liberation Army of China with 2.3 million.

In third place Amazon with 2.2 million, and in seventh place McDonald’s with 1.9 million.

Compared with Foxconn, manufacturing in the UK is small beans by comparison. The largest factory in the UK is Heinz in Kitt Green, Wigan, one of the largest food manufacturers in Europe, producing nearly three million cans per day with just 850 employees.

On average one 415gm can of beans contains 465 beans, so I’ll let you do the maths on the number of beans consumed per annum, oh alright then, it’s 1,395 billion beans, and let me tell you, that many beans produces a shedload of greenhouse gases, methane, carbon dioxide with the smelly stuff coming from hydrogen sulphide…

So if you want to help save the planet, cut out those baked beans immediately. Remember, we’re aiming for net Zero by 2050 and fewer beans meanz fewer smellz and, well survival I guess.

Now, as the festive season approaches, let’s consider a mathematical analysis of Christmas.

Let’s assume one quarter of the world’s population are under 18, so that’s around two billion children. Of that two billion Santa Claus visits around 15 per cent of them, mostly those of a Christian heritage, around 350 million children and at an average of 3.5 children per home, Santa has to visit 100 million homes travelling east to west over the full 24 hours. To complete the job in that time Santa has to visit 1,160 homes every second, and so has 1/1,160 of a second to park his sleigh, dismount, slide down the chimney, leave the presents around the Christmas tree, drink a large glass of sherry, eat at least three and a half mince pies, climb back up the chimney, get back on the sleigh and drive on to the the next house.

Calculations conclude that Santa has to travel some 75 million miles at a speed of 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times the speed of sound, whilst a typical reindeer can only run at around 15 miles per hour.

Now if the average weight of each child’s present is two pounds, the sleigh will need to carry a payload of nearly 325,000 tons, and that’s not counting Santa himself who judging by those pictures we see of him is no skinny minny.

Given that a single reindeer can only pull 300lbs, Santa would need 215,000 reindeer of a species as yet unidentified, in fact, flying reindeer.

325,000 tons travelling at the speed of 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance which would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.

The lead reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second and would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time that Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in 0.001 of a second, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 times gravity. A 250lb Santa would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015lbs of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore if Santa did ever exist, I’m sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings but he’s dead now and that my friends is the beauty of mathematical analysis and mind-blowing numbers.

Have a very merry Christmas. I’ll see you in 2023.