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Keeping Up With Santa Clause

If the world has 6 billion people,
and if the average household has six people so that there are one billion households in the world,
and if two-thirds of those households have children,
and if two-thirds of the households that do have children have at least one child who has been nice,
and if we were to take all the households that have at least one child who has been nice and were to line them up all on one side of one very long street, 8 houses per block and 12 blocks per mile,
and if I were to get in my freshly tuned up, supercharged spunky clunker with my miraculous new invention that allows me to carry limitless amounts of fuel with negligible weight and volume, and put the pedal right to the floor and drive 100 mph without stopping for food, gas, bathrooms, sleep or any other reason,
how long would it take me to drive past all these houses, without stopping to go down any chimneys, trying to keep up with Santa's sleigh?

(Hint: I would fail.)

Answer:

5 years, 102 days, 18 hours, 17 minutes, and 47 seconds. (And you believed in Santa Claus!)

Calculation: 2/3 x 2/3 x 1,000,000,000 = 444,444,444 houses. Eight houses per block and 12 blocks per mile yields 8 x 12 = 96 houses per mile. Dividing this into the number of houses yields 444,444,444/96 = 4,629,630 miles that I would need to travel. Since I am traveling 100 mph, I divide by 100 to get 4,629,630/100 = 46,296 hours. Since there are 24 hours in a day and 365.25 days in a year, the number of hours in a year are 24 x 365.25 = 8766. Dividing this into the total number of hours gives us 46,296/8766 = 5.281347964 years. (I will leave it to you to verify that 0.281347964 years comes out to 102 days, 18 hours, 17 minutes, and 47 seconds, if you consider that important.)