Math Mutation 50:  A True Holiday Celebration

    Today I'm going to tell you how to truly celebrate Christmas:  you
can breathe in one of the actual molecules of air that was in Baby
Jesus's first breath!  Actually, this form of celebration doesn't take
much effort, since you're inherently doing it, whether you planned to
or not.  But perhaps if you recognize the holy nature of some of your
molecules, it will enhance the flavor of the season.
    Why do I say you're doing it anyway?  Well, think about this.  The
average human breath contains a number of air molecules roughly equal
to 10 to the 22nd power.  Now, a baby is pretty small, so for the
sake of argument let's cut that down to 10 to the 21st power for Baby
Jesus.  After two-thousand-plus years, I think it's fair to estimate
that those molecules are now pretty well randomly dispersed throughout
the atmosphere.
    The atmosphere overall contains a number of air molecules
approximately equal to 10 to the 44th power.  So the proportion of
molecules that were actually present in that breath is 10 to the 21st
over 10 to the 44th, or about 1 in 10 to the 23rd.  But remember that
each of your breaths contains an average of 10 to the 22nd air
molecules, so you breathe in 10 times 10 to the 22nd, or 10 to the
23rd, air molecules every ten breaths.  Thus, in the long term, you
expect that on average, you will inhale a Baby Jesus Breath molecule
every 10 breaths.  Don't you feel closer to Him already?
    Incidentally, if you're a non-Christian like me, you don't need to
feel left out of the holiday season.  This calculation works equally
well for Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Zoroaster, Quetzacoatl, Akhnaten, or
Mitochondrial Eve, assuming each of them actually existed and breathed
our atmosphere at some point.  I first heard this argument based on
Julius Caesar's last breath, in John Allen Paulos' classic book
"Innumeracy".  So whatever your spritual or non-spirtitual tradition,
celebrate the season by breathing in deep and sharing some air
molecules with your biological or philosophical ancestors. 
    And this has been your Math Mutation for today.



References:

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_%28book%29">John Allen Paulos' Innumeracy</a>
<li><a href="http://paul.burney.ws/thoughts/caesars_breath.html">Summary of 'Caesar's Last Breath' Argument</a>