Stuff that Weighs More than Me: Santa's List

This is a late post-Christmas entry, but I'm going to use it anyways because A) New Years is all about lists and B) I had the research done before I got sick before the holidays and I'm basically to lazy to try to keep this until next year.

Now technically Santa could store all the naughty/nice data for the children of the world on a computer or even a freaking thumb drive both of which certainly weigh less than me.  But have you ever seen a picture of Santa sidling up to a laptop?  I didn't think so.  Nope, we all know that Santa's got a book--a BIG book.

Now the latest estimates indicate that Santa's got around 2.5 billion kids (under 18) to keep track of.  Now to estimate the weight of that giant book, lets take a phone book to a major metropolitan area as a guide.  A phone book for a decent-sized city might have 1 million names in it.   A phone book like that (which is printed very small--even for Santa's reader glasses and on very thin paper which is a far cry from the leather bound parchment paged thing we see in all the movies) weighs about 2.5 pounds.

So here comes the math:
1 Million names in  a 3" thick phone book weighs about 3 pounds.
2.5 billion= 2500 phone books
Santa's Book is 7500 inches or 625 feet thick
Santa's Book weighs at least 7500 lbs or 3.75 short tons


Conclusion: Santa's list weighs more than my list (thank goodness) AND weighs more than me.


Want to learn a little more about holiday (including New Year's) lists?  Check here!