Science and
Santa
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000
species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of
these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out
flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18 ).
But since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish,
or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the
total-- leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference
Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household,
that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good
child per house.
3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the
different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he
travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6
visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with good
children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the
sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the
remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been
left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on
to the next house.
4) Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly
distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false
but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are
now talking about
0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not
counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31
hours, plus feeding, etc. That means that Santa's sleigh is moving
at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For
purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the
Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A
conventional reindeer can run, at tops
25-30 miles per hour.
5) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element.
Assuming each child gets nothing more then a medium sized LEGO set
(2 lbs.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa,
who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional
reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the
"flying reindeer" can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot
do the job with eight, or even nine--we need 214,200 reindeer. This
increased the payload--not even counting the weight of the
sleigh--to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison, this is four times
the weight of the HMS Queen Elizabeth.
6) Three hundred and fifty-three thousand tons travelling at 650
miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat
the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the
earth's atmosphere.
The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per
second, each. In short, they will burst into flames almost
instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a
deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will
be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile,
will be subject to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times greater
than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would
be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a
4,315,015 pound force. In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver
presents on Christmas eve, he's now retired.
