Well you all seem to have made it to the end of term and are now enjoying your well earned break but the geography doesn't stop there. I wonder if you have thought about where those Christmas presents come from? If you answered Father Christmas then you may be interested in the NORAD tracks Santa site which uses our favourite tool Google Earth (along with Radar, fighter jets and webcams of course) to track Santa as he delivers presents on Christmas Eve. Those of you who have been planning Santas route around the world in lessons will already know that by starting in New Zealand and working his way west Santa can make the night last 36 hours! However this still means that he has to travel at 650 miles per second to visit everyones house in time. At this speed friction from air resistance would usually heat an object to 5000 degrees Celcius in 4 thousanths of a second and vapourise it. Fortunately Santa is magic, as we all know and so he survives. It may explain Rudolf's red nose though!
As we all know there is only so much toy making elves can do and so with the population of the world hitting over 6.7 billion people and rising fast Santa has increasingly followed the global trend of "outsourcing"to make many toys. This Christmas we are asking you all in year 7 and 9 (though anyone is welcome to join in!) to record where your Christmas presents were made so we can build up a map of global manufacturing. To join in either leave your list of countries as a comment on this blog or make a list and bring it with you to your first lesson back. My class yesterday though China would be the clear winner but what do you think?
