Santa Physics
- 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 seen. - There are 2 billion children (under 18) in the world. But since Santa
doesn’t appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish children, that
reduces the work load to 15% of the total - 378 million or so. At an
average rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One
presumes there’s at least one good child in each. - Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with thanks to time zones and
the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. 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 stockings, istribute the
remaining gifts under the tree, eat the snacks, get back up the chimney,
get back in the sleigh, and move on to the next house. Assuming that each
of these 91.8 million homes are distributed evenly (which we know to be
false but for the sake of these calculations we will accept) we are now
talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75 ½ million miles,
not counting bathroom stops. This means that Santa’s sleigh is traveling at
650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For comparison, the
fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe moves at a poky 27.4 MPS;
the average reindeer runs at 15 MPH. - The sleighs payload adds another interesting element. Assuming that each
child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (2 pounds), the sleigh
is carrying 321,300 tons not counting Santa, who is inexorably described as
overweight. On land, confessional reindeer can pull no more than 300
pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point one) could pull TEN
TIMES the usual amount, we can not do the job with 8 or even 9, we need
214,000 reindeer. This increases the weight, not even counting the sleigh,
to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison this is 4 times the weight of the
Queen Elizabeth 2. - 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance. This will heat the reindeer in the same manner as a spacecraft
re-entering the earths atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb
14.2 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will
burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the next pair of
reindeer, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire
team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousands of a second. Santa,
meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times the
force of gravity. A 300 pound Santa would be pinned to the back of his
sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. - Conclusion: There was a Santa, but he’s dead now.
The Snacks Addendum
By My Roommate
I believe that the above analysis glosses over the key fact: the
snacks. Why do we leave snacks for Santa? Why does he need them? Assuming
the 91.8 million homes identified as his target area and assuming a payload
of 3 cookies and a glass of milk he is consuming 390 calories per household
(assuming 3 chips deluxe cookies and 2% milk) which somes out to a Christmas
Eve chaloric intake of 35.8 billion callories in just over a day. According
to back of a box of Chips Deluxe (suspicuosly made by little elves in trees
I might add) the average human daily intake is 2000 calories. This comes
out to roughly 13 million times more chalories than the average human. Now
remember that chalories are human fuel, we turn them into energy. I propose
that Santa is actually a human (or not so human) generator. And that he not
only powers the “sleigh” (the raindeer are only there for marketing reasons,
you know animals and babies and such) but also the force field that keeps
everyone intact.
…and to all a good night!